Synechdoche, New York

Director: Charlie Kaufman 
Year: 2008

When you go down the rabbit hole with Charlie Kaufman, you have to be ready. This is acquired taste for many. Personally, I like have my mind tweaked. I like the feeling of not knowing what I'm watching sometimes, especially when I'm in the hands of a trusted artist like Charlie.

So it goes with Synecdoche, New York. The brilliant Seymour Phillip Hoffman helms the quest as Caden Gutard and leads us into his melancholy by waking up to the haunting sounds of a child (his daughter, I think) singing, which blends into an NPR like show welcoming a poet who espouses the beauty of fall as a season, particularly in its representations of death. What follows is a two hour meditation into/about Caden's character's death - marriage, family, career and life itself.

Kaufman has a gift for walking a line between philosophy, humor and heartbreak. He showcases that throughout via bizarre characters who say and do bizarre things, like his ex-wife's girlfriend tattoing his daughter then becoming her lesbian lover. The movie is littered with head-jerking what the hell did I just see/hear moments like this. And heartbreaking as they are, Caden labors on. He searches desperately for meaning, love and purpose. It's debatable whether or not he ever truly finds it in the hall of mirrors that is the theater he builds in the second half of the movie, complete with doppleganger upon doppleganger.

Just when the whole house of cards felt like it was too much and I wondered if I even wanted to finish this massacre of sadness, a character playing a priest in the play Caden has been producing for several decades (as much as time means anything in his world) gives a speech (read it here if you wish - semi-spoiler alert) that heals both he and the audience at once. He ties together everything in an incredible manner that validates much of what the viewer has seen, regardless of whether or not the priest is "right" about the interpretation of the events. He gives some context, almost like a one man Greek Chorus, allowing us (and Caden) to allow the curtain to slowly fall.

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