By Grant Maierhofer.
Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charlie Kaufman, 2008
I don’t know why but I’m still affected by the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I didn’t know him, and I don’t think I’ve even seen all of his work, but his presence is so affecting to me. He doesn’t look like an actor. He struggled with addiction. He got sober young and relapsed. It scares me.
In Charlie Kaufman’s film we probably have his best work, playing a director putting on productions that grow from Death of a Salesman to an impossibly large thing, but in the ninth minute of the film we just have him talking to his doctor. The doctor asks if he means right as in morally correct or as in accurate. Hoffman’s Caden Cotard says he doesn’t know, maybe accurate, and then we’re with these two for a moment, this awkward moment between someone who is hyper aware of themselves and his doctor, and although there’s always that temptation to simply state anything to keep an appointment moving along, that doesn’t happen, and suddenly both men are forced to sit and think, and it’s uncomfortable but warm.
And then we have Cotard watching his production of Death of a Salesman in dress rehearsal, and Willie Loman is delivering his speech to his son who walks off in the middle of the scene about football. He realizes his son has gone and goes to his car, the car crashes into the house and in the production a piece of architecture hits Michelle Williams’ character, so Cotard goes to check on her. It’s clear there’s a budding romance between them.
In the midst of this Cotard says it’s too late in the game to be having these problems. At around nine minutes into the film it feels fine to link that with the movie itself. Or it’s Cotard’s life, and it’s the place wherein he can express his frustration over the ongoing problems that are consuming him — his family, his health, his work, his identity — and his frustration is the same as Willie’s, then, the father trying to wax poetically about the importance of the big game, and these big moments, who lashes out by crashing his car, as Cotard lashes out at the crash itself and everything breaking down around him.
Two protagonists, then, a mumbling Everyman who is subjected to the average medical appointment wherein he gives up everything to find out what’s happening, only to be stopped with a quandary about the differences between moral rightness and simply being correct; and a theater director late in preparations for a play about the lateness of living and the world moving on whether or not we’d like it to, lashing out but then laughing and embracing the small comforts of a tryst with the starring actress.
It’s interesting because there are moments in this film I find physically painful to watch. There’s a moment when Hoffman’s character is putting together this massive production in a warehouse the size of the city and it becomes so introspective that I can hardly bear to look at it. I think I chose Synecdoche for a piece of criticism like this because I knew it wouldn’t mean I’d have to watch the entire film again, and I don’t know what that says about me or about the work, to be simultaneously drawn towards something and its creator but not to be so drawn towards it that I want to simply watch it over and over again and can even comfortably do so.
I watch Synecdoche every year or every couple of years or so. I get caught up in different elements, most recently Olive’s (Cotard’s daughter) tattoos—I liked the idea of trying to replicate them on myself as a way of forever connecting with the film. I don’t even know if it’s something I’d say I like in a typical application of that term. There are artworks that I like, and artworks that I even love, and then there are those perhaps I need, or have needed, and this film would fit in there, where its aesthetic rendering of certain preoccupations of the creator align perfectly with my own thinking.
We get the whiffs of the rest of the film here, in minute 9, the sense of frustration the outside world can often impose on people driven by aesthetics, and the awkward lives such people lead whenever they’re not in their various temples. The sense of bliss that’s double-edged when Cotard is in his temple and everything’s not entirely perfect, and the predilection people in these situations have for simply telling jokes or laughing, because to name anything else too exactly might hinder the experience of everyone involved. The presence of the director, too, in Cotard but also in Kaufman: imposings upon imposings upon imposings. In his review of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Roger Ebert made the point that even fictional films are a sort of documentary about the actors performing in these films, which I think also nicely expresses the layerings of influence and performance in Synecdoche, New York.
In the realm of the practical, then, i.e., the doctor’s office, this artist is useless; he’s mumbling and unsure and evasive. The doctor, comparatively, is comfortable and incisive, commenting on Cotard’s observation and moving around it without much in the way of anxiety or reservation. In the theater, though, Cotard isn’t bashful, or unsure, and responds quickly to a potential injury with the same speed we’d hope a doctor might exercise in a similar situation. The film itself seems to also be about the growth of an aesthetic life to the extent it almost becomes unwieldy, where people viewing the warehouse much later in Synecdoche, New York couldn’t help but ask why, and wonder at the role this kind of production might play in living. What’s interesting is that this doesn’t happen. Everybody there is committed, even if they’re asking their director why, and he can’t offer much in response. Living beats Cotard down, as does the work, but here, there’s still a fire and a determination to see this production through, to make it unique and to make it expressive and powerful. The wavering in the doctor’s office gives way to certitude and drive.
Something I struggle with with film in particular is the desire to take it in in any order I’d like. I hear about readers who read the end of a book first, and I’ve read some things piecemeal and never entirely through, and the distinctions with film seem arbitrary enough or at least made so by television and our screens, where films are broken into pieces anyway. Oddly, too, it seems natural, so when I rewatch this ninth minute consciously I feel as though I’m engaging in a criticism most in line with my natural aesthetic position, the one where I’m no longer carving out large swathes of time to watch one film from beginning to end, or reading much work that seems to demand a kind of attention that now feels unnatural, for better or worse.
Most of us don’t like to visit the doctor, and I think it has to do with the forfeiture of authority. In this situation, the doctor has indicated that the eyes are part of the brain, and Hoffman’s character suggests that this just doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem entirely right, and it’s left there, with the moral question pursued and the usage question, rather than resolving it, and this leads to the dress rehearsal and the shift where Cotard is now the authority, and in his position of authority he behaves not unlike a doctor in an emergency. A flirtatious doctor, and a theater director who’s able to treat his work with an utmost seriousness, which again preoccupies me.
I don’t know why, but I find myself thinking most these days about the question of art and what it’s for. Emil Cioran wrote about there being something wonderful in the pursuit of doing something that’s entirely useless. To pursue something that is useless as opposed to doing any of the countless other things a person might do could have a kind of honor to it. And the world wants to tell us which things are useful and which things are useless. But the longer I live — and certainly this is a film to be lived with — the more I feel it’s inadequate to think of art as useless, unless we’re willing to go all the way. All the way in or all the way out, and this film feels like someone going all the way in to see what’s there.
It’s an art that’s so grand that it feels comfortable to look at it with pity, a space where an artist puts everything in front of you, and takes that gesture quite seriously, and your reaction to it — like any reaction to any vulnerability — inevitably communicates the most about where you’re at, and that’s okay, too.
I’ve just watched the ninth minute one more time, from a few seconds before to a few seconds after, and I think there’s something to watching or taking in certain works of art in this manner. For some people, Synecdoche, New York is too much to bear in its entirety all at once. I don’t know why I’m that sort of person, but I think it’s true. Looking at this, though, and thinking about the whole of it, and what I like and dislike and love and hate about it, I’m certain it’s a work of art. I used to say that Paris, Texas was my favorite film. Probably, in part, because I thought this made me sound cooler than I am, and partly because, when I first watched it, about forty minutes in, the sentence “this is my favorite film” came into my mind. It’s odd because I don’t sit around excited to watch that film, and I doubt I’ve even seen it more than ten times, but it’s similar to Synecdoche, New York in that I know it affects me deeply, and there’s something in it that resonates so much with me that I actually find it hard to watch. I have no doubt that Wenders’ film would lend itself quite well to this sort of viewing experience. Piecemeal, split up, with the pressure lessened. I don’t know what any of this means.
Previous essays in the Minute 9 series curated by Nicholas Rombes:
1. Nicholas Rombes
2. Alex Zamalin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grant Maierhofer is the author of Ebb, most recently, and a forthcoming book from Inside the Castle whose title is too long to include here.
