Synecdoche, New York and Shakespeare - Time, Truth and Art
Shakespeare would love Synecdoche, New York . He wrote about the kind of big issues that Charlie Kaufman has been grappling with in his latest movie - finding meaning in a meaningless universe, the desire against all odds to be the author of our life, how art can never deliver the real thing, Time's bewildering effect on experience and memory, and... I could go on.
Synecdoche, New York DVD AND BLU-RAY
Everyone's been saying you have to see this movie at least twice. And they're right. It's so complex that there are so many things you miss the first time round.
Being able to read the script and watch the movie is the best way to appreciate what Kaufman's script was trying to do.
Out Now - Charlie Kaufman's Script for Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman's mind-stretching movie uses all kinds of alternative screenwriting techniques. It's true, that his huge talent and originality and ability to blow up all the rules is not something a less experienced screenwriter might attempt. But Kaufman is a wonderful inspiration to all writers who are trying to avoid the pitfalls of following tired and outdated formulas.
So studying any Kaufman script is really required reading for all writers. It's absolutely fascinating to read how he put his amazing ideas down on the page. The idea is not to imitate him, but to be inspired by his boldness and originality to take a few risks as you're writing your screenplay. Get it now.
Synecdoche New York. Screenwriter/Director: Charlie Kaufman. Likely Story. Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.
As Kaufman described the movie (I suspect with his tongue firmly in his cheek!): “It’s about people’s losses and death and fear of death and intimacy and relationships. Romance and regret and struggle and ego and jealousy and confusion and loneliness and sex and loss — all those things are in the movie. I wanted it to be an all-inclusive experience of a person’s life. It’s this guy’s world.”
But it isn't just the themes of the film that make me think of Shakespeare.
Kaufman shares something much more significant with the greatest dramatist who ever lived. He quite often seems to manage to pull off one of the toughest challenges for any writer. He can give intellectual ideas an emotional resonance.
Shakespeare had this capacity in bucket-loads, which is why he's the towering genius he is and why his plays transcend time and culture.
Kaufman's film has sent me back to the first book I wrote about Shakespeare that looked at the dramatist's obsession with exposing art's sterility. He's always questioning how art can ever be able to deliver the real thing. Imitate life, and it becomes lifeless. How can the artist or writer accommodate the flesh-and-bloodness of human existence, organic process, mutability and time?
The movie centres on a theatre director who builds a replica of New York City inside a giant warehouse. He wants to direct his own life, and imagines that by creating this artifice, God-like, he can direct life itself. Rather like Shakespeare's artist-magician, Prospero in The Tempest who came to realise that art can never be a substitute for life. In this play, in which Shakespeare virtually invented the genre of science fiction, conventional narrative devices for time and space are turned upside down and inside out.
Events are repeated, reversed, cancelled out, Time is contracted, distorted, expanded to span decades, and is spell-stopped - Shakespeare's wizardry at experimenting with narrative structure was revolutionary.
So it's interesting to see today's most inventive screenwriters play tricks with
structure.
Kaufman employs his trademark wizardry with time and space to an extreme in Synecdoche, New York. Narrative structure is made to perform dizzying gymnastics as layers of meaning unfold.
Avoiding The Emotional Cliches
There are some powerful emotional scenes in the movie. One strength of Kaufman's is that he always tries to avoid movie cliches when it comes to a character's feelings. As the main character, Caden Cotard, Philip Seymour Hoffman draws the audience deep into his emotional life. The portrait of his marriage and his relationship with his daughter are given the characteristic Kaufman treatment of honesty and acute psychological understanding. For this alone, the movie is worth watching by every screenwriter. And notice how Cotard's deteriorating physical state becomes more and more a manifestation of his inner life.
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PLEASE NOTE: THE TECHNICAL GLITCH IN THE REPLY TO THIS FORM HAS BEEN SOLVED. SORRY TO ANYONE WHO HAD PROBLEMS WITH IT. ALL IS WORKING OK NOW
A Profoundly Serious Meditation on Art and Truth, Full of Ambiguity
'Synecdoche' is a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole or the whole for a part, as in '50 head of cattle' for '50 cows', 'the army' for a soldier, 'screen' for the movies. Even Cotard's name has a significance for the story. The Cotard delusion or Cotard's syndrome, is also known as 'nihilistic or negation delusion'. It's a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs.
Cotard's replica of New York City re-presents the real New York City - a part for the whole, but not even a real part of the whole. The 'synecdoche' here shows art as a doubly inadequate substitution for life. Cotard's imitation may be life-sized, but it's not life, only a constructed artifice, a mere simulacrum of a real thing.
Kaufman's playful, but profoundly serious meditation on art and truth is perplexing and full of ambiguity, and it packs an emotional punch.
The movie's title is also a play on the name of a city in Schenectady County, New York State, where the film is set.
Screenwriting Visual Grammar - Free ebook
The very title of the movie - Synecdoche, New York - reflects the enormous part that the visuals play in the story. They're an outstanding use of screenwriting visual grammar to make meaning.
And it's because visual grammar is so little understood and underplayed by the usual screenwriting advice that I created a special ebook on the subject.
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Charlie Kaufman Talking About Synecdoche, New York
An interesting clip here of Charlie Kaufman talking at Cannes about how he works. The process he describes is a million miles away from what we're told by the screenwriting gurus.
Latest
Sony Pictures have just put up their site for Synecdoche, New York. They've certainly gone all out to help anyone on the planet who doesn't already know what the 's' word means, or doesn't have a dictionary.
An endless sequence tells us how to pronounce 'synecdoche', informs us it's a noun (!), and shows sombre-looking slabs dissolving in and out accompanied by dramatic music, proclaiming numerous examples of the word's definition.
Do they think we're morons?!!
The trailer and sound are great though!
Check it out:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny/
Check Out: Synecdoche, New York Great Kaufman Interview
Charlie Kaufman Interview. The famously reclusive screenwriter who hates talking about his work is profiled on WIRED. It has 2.5 hours of audio interview which has Kaufman talking about screenwriting and his directorial debut. And a very interesting piece about how they got Kaufman to talk and how they went about creating the profile.
Worth checking out.
Go to the profile and listen to the audios on WIRED here:
Shakespeare had this capacity in bucket-loads, which is why he's the towering genius he is and why his plays transcend time and culture.
