Charlie Kaufman
Synecdoche, New York

THE REVIEW

Get ready, you're about to watch the first film by Charlie Kaufman.

Elimination of some narrative tropes.

No doors, no tunnels, this is not Being John Malkovich, it's not directed by Spike Jonze. There will be identity confusions, there will be identity and sexual orientation confusions, yet the setting will be realistic, true, real.

No memory-erasing machine, it's not Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it's not directed by Michel Gondry. Memories and timelines are already confused in each of our minds.

This film is Synecdoche, New York.

Identification.

Try to imagine being suddenly abandoned by your wife and daughter.

Moreover, you've just discovered you have a serious neurological disease.

However, you're not Walter White.

So get ready to live completely dissociated from your and others' reality.

Already done?

Good. At this point, you have an idea of the situation in which Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is thrown at the beginning of the film.

Now, prepare to see your tastes and habits erased, your identity erased, think of it becoming a fluid identity.

Try to imagine being all the people you have lived with.

Imagine the days blending with years, the years with decades. That your life lasts only an hour like in a story by Kafka or Buzzati.

Try now to pick up the threads. Imagine writing a drama about all this, about life, about your whole life.

Do you think you can do it?

Appendix

Artists who love the human psyche and hate consumer psychology.

Humbert Humbert, the man madly in love with Lolita, in his confessions mocks the easy conclusions and labels that psychologists and psychiatrists have come to and will come to regarding his case.

Zeno Cosini in his memoirs, collected at the suggestion of Doctor S, accumulates lies and truths, and then abruptly stops the therapy.

Everyone distrusts certain psychoanalysis.

Similarly, Caden Cotard, with or without a partner, visits a plastic, seductive, assertive, non-problematic, eerie psychoanalyst. In a personal universe that is falling apart, we observe his depressing coldness paint this complicated, colorful, and multifaceted reality all in one color.

A reality that won't make you sleep but that no one should ignore.