This next film is keeping with the monthly theme of the 4 “I’s”, which you can read about on the first review of the month, Mr. Nobody. I realize that I took a detour with my review of What Dreams May Come, but I still felt that it fit within my 4 “I’s” standards, and it was an interesting representation with the recent death of Robin Williams. Today, I’ll be looking at Synecdoche, New York, which is kind of an interesting representation of another recently deceased actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Synecdoche, New York is a film that is interesting, but I can’t say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and it certainly isn’t for everyone. It was written by Charlie Kaufman, who created interesting films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is about wiping one’s mind and gets into some real speculative fiction territory. His film Adaptation is about a screen writer trying to adapt a book into a movie, and it is actually quite interesting, provided you look at it as a completely imaginary story.

Kaufman’s film generally discuss writing and how the creative process can take over, and Synecdoche, New York is no exception. The film is about a man who is given a grant for a play. So what does the playwright do? He creates a scale-sized set of New York that he puts in a massive warehouse.

That would essentially be the plot of this film in a nutshell, but the film shows this writer’s life in chronological order. The end result feels like something like life, as you see his troubles with his family and health.

There are so many things that don’t make sense in this film. There is a house that one of the characters desires that is constantly on fire. There is never any explanation. Is the writer trying to imply that the past, present, and the future are combining all at once? That would be fascinating.

The film gets really weird as the main character is doing his play within a fake New York, which involves a character of himself. This character of himself creates a fake New York as well and…dang, this is getting more complicated than a time travel movie.

Eventually, the main character decides to take a role in his own play, I think. This is what Wikipedia tells me, because this movie doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It doesn’t really feel pretentious, which is a point in its favor. Still, this film is weird, but it wasn’t so weird that I didn’t want to stop watching it.