Synecdoche, New York marks Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut.  It’s the story of a Caden Cotard, a theater director whose life is falling apart: his marriage is a wreck, his health is failing, and reality just ain’t what it used to be.  Though being awarded a MacArthur genius grant seems like an upswing for the beleagured Cotard, it only really sets the stage (literally, as it leads to him to build a scale model of New York in a spatially-improbably warehouse) for an intensified search for meaning in an increasingly incomprehensible world.

I’ve seen Synechdoche, New York described as “tragicomic,” but while watching the film I had a difficult time locating the “comic” portion.  This is a very depressing movie that seems to depress the experience of time itself–I was sure I had been in the theater, wallowing in Kaufman’s existential mire, for about three hours and was surprised to see that the movie was only about two hours long.  And somehow when I left I felt thirty years older.  And none the wiser.  And yet I kind of enjoyed the experience.  Just don’t make me watch it again soon, okay?

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