Synecdoche, New York2008

Trying to put Synecdoche, New York into words is as impossible as creating a theatre piece about Everything, in the search for everything, one tends to face nothing, an obstacle or a finality… I will try to avoid Caden’s mistake, where he tries to incorporate the everything in his work, and instead I’ll focus on my thoughts and the little interpretations of mine. Somehow, amid the structural chaos, the movie finds a way to flow seamlessly, where Time itself is in shambles, years blip in seconds, moments echoes in repetition, you try to understand the way it moves and you realise Time is being selective, choosing what to preserve and what to let fade, according to what or to whom? I don’t know. What I do know is that someone is fighting, a mission to capture one’s self against the misfortunes of life, yet it gets misguided, turns into a parody of the very thing it sought to capture, in this play everything loops around, sets become homes, actors become people and directors turn into actors, a play to represent it all, a part to play the whole. I admire Caiden’s dedication, but I struggle to grasp the meaning or the message as the credits roll, fundamentally, I think the movie asks “what is life?” and the theatre play is an attempted answer to this question, it tries to capture life, but it fails? Caiden did everything to give meaning to his existence, and all he did was getting lost in the known, he missed it, he became a stranger to his life, hiring actors to play his part, then an actor to play his actor and soon between himself and his reflection, he no longer belonged. I tried to reconstruct his image but suddenly he was a cleaning lady? I will confront myself, and when I’m done, I shall come back to this film, through symbolism and dreams, love and sickness, I’ll attempt to put it back together, and in doing so I might reconstruct myself.