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The protagonist of any tragedy can suffer as one of two people: the man, or the artist. The vast majority of tragedies subject their lead to the former. I needn’t even list examples of times we’ve watched as a man has hurt or lost something important to him. What makes these moments bearable though is the hero’s ability to channel his suffering into something that exhibits the beauty of humanity. We can watch Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago be repeatedly thrust into the mud, because we as observers are constantly being reminded that he is letting out all of his frustration as beautiful poetry. We can watch Roberto Benigni have his life destroyed in Life Is Beautiful, because we know that he still managed to make someone else’s existence less miserable. This redeeming quality is needed for us to truly care about the downtrodden. A single act of beauty can make even the most wretched circumstances watchable, and their protagonists even enviable. So what happens if the characters suffer within their lives, but also fail at creating anything that makes their life meaningful? Is this not the greatest tragedy of all?

As art has transitioned more and more into themes of realism, where an artist’s life ends, and their art begins has become a more and more blurred line. Artists draw on what they see around them, and how they relate to it. This being the case in most movements post new wave, if an artist lives a pathetic existence, shouldn’t their art theoretically be teeming with that same pathetic quality?

Synecdoche, New York starts off as a simple domestic drama. The middle aged, moderately successful theater director, Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) wakes up one fall morning. He has settled into a comfortable existence with his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener) and their daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein). Some of the movie’s best dialogue happens between these three characters within the first 25 minutes of the movie. After that Caden is left alone as his wife and daughter become invisible forces that drive seemingly all of Caden’s actions for the remaining 98 minutes of the movie. We watch Caden’s life gradually fall apart from then on. It isn’t in any way more tragic than how any one else’s life gradually deteriorates after they hit forty, but this movie is edited in such a way that the viewer can never quite gauge the passage of time, and it seems as if Caden’s body is gradually succumbing to some terrible, terminal illness. Once one finishes watching the movie, the real weight of this sinks in. All of Caden’s symptoms were that of an illness that the vast majority of us will unavoidably die of: old age.

Caden, due to his strong background in theater, sees a man’s entire existence unfolding in an hour or two. He cannot help but empathize with the characters he constructs, assuming that his entire life is but the same flicker as Willy Loman’s, able to be entirely explained within an hour or two. We watch the last forty or so years of Caden’s life unfold over the course of two hours, and by the end one is struck by the sense that the viewer knows just as much about the lead character as he knows about himself; it is as if the year long time lapses between events wouldn’t have contributed any additional insight into the inner workings of a certain Mr. Caden Cotard.

Within the window of this man’s waning life, virtually every theme that has ever preoccupied the mind of an aging man is explored. We watch Caden struggle in relating to his family, understanding exactly what he wants from a woman, and most importantly, what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind. There are a handful of points when Caden reaches a plateau, a point at which his life is seemingly what he wants, and should need to operate optimally as an artist. Soon after, though, Caden spies something off in the distance that he desires. He is constantly looking for just this something more, and then never quite happy when he attains it. This theme is represented in Caden’s directions to his acting troupe, and his constantly shifting goal in his ongoing project of a theater piece. He tries to better understand his own life by forcing actors to re-enact it in front of him, and by doing this only becomes more and more removed from his own existence.

This movie explores the unfathomably complex question: “what is the purpose of art?” Is it to better understand reality, or is it within itself an escape from reality? Charlie Kaufman explores this theme with more verve than any auter I have ever had the joy to watch. Whereas his earlier works like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. were incredible commentaries on the nature and purpose of art, this movie goes leaps and bounds further, making its protagonist infinitely more relatable to than any of his previous films, by simply making his existence all the more varied and vague. This of course causes the movie to have many Lynchian, dream-logic-like qualities, which ironically has had the effect of making this movie less accessible to the linearly self-righteous.

Synecdoche is without a doubt, the best movie of the year. It is touching, tragic, and quite simply incredible to see what Kaufman has created. A directorial debut of such epic proportions is only comparable to that of Orson Welles. My only hope is that this incredible film’s tragic snubbing by the public won’t make this the last film for Kaufman in which he has total control. If this is indeed the case, one must watch this film and ask: “In 2075, which early films of the 21st century will be the most revered?”

-Paul Brinnel