Welcome to Part VII of Theatre in Film, our weekly feature on a film that depicts a life in the theatre. In Part VII, we examine films with biting humor, fantastical plots, and theatre family values. This week, we celebrate the 2008 absurdist drama, Synecdoche, New York starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Director: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, and Tom Noonan

What happens:

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) finds his life falling apart after his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) leaves him and takes their daughter with her. His discontent with life is further fueled by an increasing number of physical ailments that appear day after day. After a successful run of his direction of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Cotard obtains a MacArthur Fellowship which allows him to pursue his artistic interests — a production of brutal realism and an honest portrayal of life set in a warehouse where the set is a full-size mock-up of New York City. Over the period of the production, he has an affair with the woman who works in the box office, marries an actress and has a child with her, and finds out that Adele has become a celebrated painter (all while his daughter, Olive, is being taught by a questionable friend of Adele’s).

The years pass, and Cotard’s production is nowhere near completion. The warehouse he’s occupying is deteriorating and so is his health. Through a series of relationship failures, Cotard stumbles and falls into a routine of sabotaging his own life and rapidly destroying others’. In a freak accident, the warehouse’s city-set catches fire, and in its wake it leaves a trail of bodies and ashes. As the film ends, Cotard hears the voice of the woman who has taken over direction  for the production. It gives him a way to move forward with his project — the voice says, “Die.”

Why it matters:

Synecdoche, New York tackles a few issues of life and theatre, but most importantly, it addresses the psychological effects of getting too lost in a role.

Over the first ten minutes of the film, the audience is introduced to Cotard’s neurosis. He lives out almost 2 months in a single breakfast scene. The dates pass from September 22nd to November 2nd, and all of these dates occur in the same scene, not a montage of breakfasts. After Adele, his wife, leaves and he begins an affair with Hazel, he mentions how long his wife has been gone — “a week” — Hazel corrects him and says it’s actually been a year. Later, when he’s seen living with Claire (Michelle Williams), he sees a photo of his daughter, Olive, in a magazine with tattoos on her body, he runs out of the house…and we see a five year old girl behind him — his new daughter, Ariel. Then his father dies. In his work at the industrial theatre space (the production the MacArthur Fellowship is funding), he battles with actors and designers over how long it’ll take to complete the project. His crew asks, “When are we gonna have an audience? It’s been 17 years.”

Eventually, the lines between reality and theatre begin to blur like Cotard’s concept of time. Cotard’s set in the industrial theatre is an exact mock-up of New York, complete with police, a blimp, and livable apartment buildings. The actors, playing themselves, are caught in a never ending loop of playing characters who are themselves, and Cotard casts other people to play the people from his life. The man Cotard chooses to play him ends up delving so far into Cotard’s psyche that he begins a life-like relationship with Claire, and Claire treats him as she would the real Cotard.

As the audience, we see Cotard age and break down in front of us, but he perceives the events in his life as taking place either simultaneously or one right after the other. The events in the theatre space also show us that he’s too invested in his art to notice the difference between art and reality. And that is where we, the audience, must focus our attentions. There are times when our roles require such dedication and perseverance that we get lost in the part. We begin acting like our characters and adopt their personality traits and quirks, but sometimes that’s dangerous, especially when our relationships are affected. When the lines between reality and time are blurred without a stable connection to the “real”, we lose ourselves, and essentially, we lose control of our characters.

This film is the first film in Part VII. See below for the films in Part VII.

• Hamlet 2 (2008)
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)
• Don’t Think Twice (2016)
• Phoebe in Wonderland (2009) (Coming soon.)

Want to start with Part I? Begin with 42nd Street (1933).
Miss Part II? Check out The Band Wagon (1953).
Need a refresh for Part III? Start with our feature on All That Jazz (1979).
How about a recap from Part IV? Jump into A Chorus of Disapproval (1989).
Check out Part V, and start with An Awfully Big Adventure (1995).
Start reading Part VI with Camp (2003).