Charlie Kaufman has a great track record: he’s the guy who penned cult classics Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation. But Synecdoche, New York — the writer’s directorial debut — ultimately proves too ambitious for its own good.
The film is ostensibly about the physical, emotional and creative deterioration of a theater director (Hoffman) after his wife flees to Europe with their young daughter. Left alone with his ruminations and an unfinished master play, he begins to fill a large warehouse with actors, hoping that a plot may develop. The film takes imaginative turns as more actors are hired to mimic the actors already involved in the production and the film becomes much like a Russian doll, with stories inside stories.
But Synecdoche drowns in dream imagery and borders on incoherency. Kaufman seems to have abstracted for the sake of abstraction and not for the greater purpose of advancing his film’s depressing meta-message — that death is inevitable, and happiness is unattainable. Muddled editing and a rapidly advancing non-linear timeline weigh down (if only slightly) Philip Seymour Hoffman’s powerhouse performance.
The film does exhibit flashes of Kaufman’s genius, but they are rarer here than in his other films. No one can comment on loneliness or longing like Kaufman, but Hoffman’s insatiable main character ultimately makes for a sad film that collapses under the weight of its own complexity.
