Imitation Of Life

When it comes to cinema, I am a heathen, and yet an extremely snobbish heathen. I’ve never seen Apocalypse Now, and yet I have an intense dislike of films like Role Models (more on that story later on!) and Sex Drive. When I listen to Mark Kermode’s film reviews on 5 Live, I find myself identifying with his hatred of the modern blockbuster – moribund, over-digitalised, plotless, reliant on loud explosions and brand endorsements. And despite the contradictory nature of my taste in cinema, I still find myself drawn into seeking out the arthouse films, the foreign language films, the none-of-my-friends-have-even-heard-of-these films. Hence my excitement and anticipation for Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, shown to much acclaim at Cannes last year, but only recently benefiting from a UK release.

In the hope of finding solace in a like-minded audience, we decided to see the film at the Curzon Soho, in the company of a hundred or so alternative, arty types – checked shirts in full force; profound wash of facial hair; plenty of horn-rimmed glasses. My friend in tow remarked that, having just spent his weekend at the Primavera Festival in Barcelona, this felt like a home from home.

Onto the film. For those clueless, Synecdoche, New York follows the rather hapless, wilfully profound Caden Cotard, played by the always-immersive Philip Seymour Hoffman, a theatre director full of ideas with nowhere to use them. At the start of the film, he is trapped in a fledgling artistic family, in the dead-end Jewish suburb of Schenectady, New York (hence the title of the film), in a daringly un-daring production of Death Of A Salesman. His marriage is uncomfortable (provoking some squirmingly amusing scenes with a marriage counselor); his family life is surreal and off-kilter; his career is going nowhere. When his wife and their daughter depart for Berlin, we feel like the end is nigh.

Then, at this emotional nadir, emerges a stroke of fortune, in the form of a MacArthur Genius Grant: suddenly, Caden is blessed with unlimited resources, tasked with producing an artistic creation that is unwaveringly, brutally real and honest. In a universe that is already so unbelievable, this life’s project takes on an almost unimaginable scope and level of sacrifice. With no real life to turn to, Caden devotes himself to forging a world of minutiæ, failed relationships, dead-end jobs, paranoid delusions, myriad illnesses and ailments – in short, his own life, pushed to its logical extreme, extended way beyond its natural lifespan. All of this invention unfurls in a giant warehouse in Manhattan’s theatre district, with Caden hiring a seemingly endless chain of actors to portray people in his own life; enacting the pivotal moments in his own life; living his life for him. As he puts more and more into the play, his own life becomes less and less important. It starts out with art imitating life; predictably, it ends with life imitating art. Multiple worlds come into being within each other, rather like a Russian doll, as we see Caden trying in vain to distil his life into a series of artistic decisions that are increasingly taken by individuals other than himself. The whole film is like a distended obituary or epitaph for Caden, and it is at times unbearably sad, tugging at intangible emotions that I didn’t realise existed.

Why ’synecdoche’? Aside from the obvious pun on the original location of Caden’s life, there is something definitely synecdochic about his project. Synecdoche is a literary term referring to the substitution of the part for the whole, as in saying “His parents bought him a new set of wheels” instead of using “car”. In the film, Caden substitutes his life for the seemingly endless artistic reproduction. Elsewhere, Caden’s wife Adele becomes a massively successful artist, painting more and more miniature portraits of alarmingly explicit forms (at her first retrospective, exhibition-goers don pairs of jewellers’ glasses to see the paintings), substituting the natural beauty of the human form for an increasingly minute representation. Predictably, the daughter, Olive, suffers from this withdrawal of reality – one minute, she’s a charming toddler, complaining about oddly-coloured stools; the next, she is a tatooed stripper working a reliably seedy Berlin join; finally, she is a prematurely aged woman on her deathbed, withered and bitter at her perceived betrayal at the hands of her father. Even in the context of the play-within-a-play’s alteration of space-time, the ‘real’ elements of the film mess around with our perception of senses, time and space, at times stretching our suspension of disbelief.

Attempting to make sense of Synecdoche, New York is possibly an equally pointless task as Caden’s eternal bildungsroman, and one requiring multiple viewings, which I have yet to find time for. But for all its inconsistencies, anachronisms and wandering eyes, the film is superbly acted and I rather fell for its bleary-eyed, teary-eyed charms. It is undeniably depressing stuff – we are watching an artist spend his whole life in the hope of understanding its true nature, and when he reaches its end, this understanding amounts to the twin realisation that “life is disappointing and death inescapable”, to borrow the sentiments of Peter Bradshaw. Caden devotes his life to art, to the detriment of his real life, and in the end he is rewarded only by the instruction, via a voice in his ear, to die. This gut-wrenching moment may play on the emotions in a suspiciously contrived and overwrought manner, but there is no denying it, Synecdoche, New York is a very tragic film that deserves everyone’s attention as an epic contemplation on art and mortality. It is a difficult watch, but only if you make it so – the first half hour, for instance, is a riot of quippery and surrealist comedy, and the whole thing is bathed in the spirit of Woody Allen and, in particular, Annie Hall. The cinematography, meanwhile, is never less than enthralling, helped along the way by beautifully decaying set design and costumes. It is no mean feat to dream up a city within a city within a city, and it is to its credit that this sense of scale never looks pompous, only awestruck.

I really did love the film, and, predictably, the ending left me with the prickling sensation of tears in my eyes, but I’m sure additional viewings will be required for me to see past the melodrama and the cheap thrills, and into the psychological aspects of the film. Certainly on first examination, it would appear that I am a sucker for tear-jerkers.