Synecdoche, New York - Review

Great movies like this make you think, instead of giving you all the answers in a cute little package saying "don't think, just watch and we will tell you how and what to think, feel, believe, etc." Caden doesn't have to share the ending with the audience, because it is staring you in the face. The reality was that the man spent his whole adult life being self-absorbed and not noticing that everyone else around him was slowly dying (Olive complaining about her green poop, Adele coughing throughout the movie, Hazel living in a house filled with smoke--it was all very symbolic) but he was too self absorbed to realize it. He could only think of his fear of dying. The bitter sweetness of it all is that he realizes that sitting there on the bench, with a complete stranger.

Attempting to review this film as a simple narrative is a mistake. Fault it for being overly ambitious, yes, but at least pay close enough attention (or go with somebody who will) to understand that it's a film about the entirety of life. It isn't just Caden's art that blurs the distinction between one and another - it's the film itself, and this would seem to be the point. If it seems slightly schizophrenic or self consciously dense, maybe that's because life can be this way too. But behind all the complexity lies a fairly simple message: there is no separation. So take it from there and call it a work of art or a piece of cr*p, but at the very least do it the service of paying attention. Unless Beverly Hills Chihuahua is playing on the adjacent screen and you still have time to catch up with the plot ..

I'm sorry, but you will not get much out of this film if you review it as just a film. I think you missed the point of the film, though your first three rhetorical questions hit close. The answers to those questions are a) art in itself is small samples of the human condition (thus, the UNpretentious title of "Synecdoche"), and in experiencing art we reflect on our own life events and values. And b) + c) Stopping and reducing things to subplots is both art as well as life, because we ourselves do sometimes generalize or stereotype people, overlook the value of their opinions and lives, and make inaccurate judgments of their character when WE, with our narrow exposure to the vast world, cannot make sense of what we are seeing. We fit large characters into small compartments so we can comprehend them more easily without trying to sympathize. Just like how Caden was so into portraying the events of his own life that he ended up treating the others in what was supposedly a play about all humans' natures as extras.

Also, I believe that the ending is a happy one that makes perfect sense. It's the same ending as that of Hannah and Her Sisters, in which Woody Allen decides to neither worry about religion nor suffer the banality of a life without an ultimate goal. He decides to simply embrace and enjoy life, as does Caden, who chooses to end the play on the best day of his life.

Finally, please don't label things as "pretentious" or "arthouse" simply because they are too complex to be understood immediately. "The only problems worth solving are ones that at first seem impossible to solve." Not saying that there is no such thing as pretention, but Synecdoche doesn't seem like it aspires to be super-complex, it's just that the topics it deals with naturally inspire befuddlement.

Thoroughly agree. I love Charlie Kauffman, but the open-ending (throwing away everything that the story built up to in a fellow sweep) was nothing more than frivolous art-house pomp.

I was fine with his touches of surrealism, and in fact loved some of them, but it seemed like they should have been part of a -- more surreal movie. I don't know how we're expected to take Caden's health problems seriously when his love lives 20+ years inhaling smoke into her lungs, and it only takes its toll decades later.

The scenes with the doctors were always funny, great, and satisfyingly awkward. I can see a little bit of a statement about our current medical system hidden in the MD's perpetual cluelessness.

Whats also great is how the film itself is, in part, a closeted sci-fi flick. We see snippets of a future society, with new technologies and social structuring, but it all takes place secondly to the narrative (something that a lot of sci-fi flick makers should take note of).