Here it is: the directorial debut from the greatest screenwriter of our times, Charlie Kaufman. He bent our brains with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and now he’s offering up the sum of modern human existence in Synecdoche.
It’s a nervous time watching the opening. Kaufman fanboys are all holding their breath to see if the man has any directing chops. It’s a frantic scan to look for weird scene flow, attempts at too much flair or anything that will show up someone trying to walk before they crawl. Thankfully there’s none of this. As far as the technical aspects go, Synecdoche is beautifully done.
It’s the story of Caden Cotard, his ailing health, failing marriage and drive to explain existence. Caden’s way of reconciling all of these things is to use a newly gifted ‘genius grant’ to create the most ambitious theatre work ever. It gets out of hand – and slightly surreal – as this work becomes an unending narrative snake, eating its own self-referential tail.
Kaufman is like a creative pit bull – you’ve gotta keep him leashed or else he’ll run amok and maul something innocent, like our self-perception. Unfortunately he’s left a little too much to his own devices here. As such, this immense and very complex subject matter often becomes lost amongst a wave of hyperbole and kookiness. It is so ambitious and infinite that you can’t help but be a little overwhelmed. It’s still great, and will leave you ruminating pleasantly; it just could’ve been a lot more simply by being a little less.
