Cotard the family man, with first wife Adele

Charlie Kaufman has become well known for his attempts to subvert the medium of film. He first came to public attention after completing the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But it was his writing for the likes of Being John Malkovich (where Malkovich plays himself, while a couple invade his brain for fun) and Adaptation (where Nicholas Cage plays struggling writer Charlie Kaufman) where he came into his own. Nothing is straightforward in Kaufman’s mind and he’s happy to bend some basic principles of film, to play with the medium and engage the audience.

Synecdoche, New York is potentially the most ‘Kaufman’ film yet. Not only is it written by him, but he also directs the piece, though he’s bought old friends like Spike Jonze along to produce as back up.

The casting is excellent. Philip Seymour-Hoffman (The Big Lebowski, Capote) takes the lead as Caden Cotard, a theatre director struggling to cope with the demands of work, home and an impending sense of loneliness and paranoia about dying. The story takes place over a period of several decades and the women in his life are played by Catherine Keener (Capote, The 40 year-old Virgin), Nottingham’s own Samantha Morton (Minority Report, Control), Hope Davis (American Splendour), Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek) and Emily Watson (Angela’s Ashes).

Cotard the pensioner, with true love Hazel

Cotard starts out as a fairly unhappy family man, with his wife Adele (Keener) dragging him to a marriage counsellor (Davis). But eventually she leaves him and moves to Germany, so he begins a relationship with theatre box office girl Hazel (Morton). Around this time he wins a scholarship and an endless budget to make a theatre masterpiece of his dreams. Relationship-wise he has moved on to actress Claire (Williams), with whom he has a second child. But after that doesn’t work out he moves back onto Hazel and bizarrely the actress that plays her in his theatre opus (Watson).

There is some trademark Kaufman humour including a child with full body tattoos and a house that is on fire for several decades without ever burning down. But the most ‘Malkovich’ moment comes when Cotard hires an actor to play himself (an untrained man who has been following him for two decades) – which your brain just about accepts. But then when he hires someone to play the actor who is playing him you suspect things are starting to go awry. The film also delves into areas other directors may not, with several scenes around the toilet - with Cotard, extremely paranoid about dying, poking around his own excrement in the bowl. Pretty grim stuff at times.

Overall, however, it’s a melancholy piece and the bittersweet aftertaste it leaves you with can probably be likened to David Fincher’s film from earlier this year The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Although in truth it’s probably a better film than that.

The underlying message is that everyone in the world is the lead character in their own production. There’s certainly a few scenes which aren’t pretty, but overall Synecdoche, New York is rather beautiful.

Synecdoche, New York is on at the Broadway Cinema until Thursday 28 May.

Synecdoche, New York

Write Comment