Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman, 2008

‘Synecdoche: You in the World, the World in You’

Time Code 00:00:00- 00:04:26

“The end is built in the beginning”, - tells us Charlie Kaufman with the opening
scene of his directorial debut. Outstanding in its complexity and mundane
simplicity, the first five minutes of the film act as a foreshadowing to the
upcoming events. The scene presents us the main character – Caden, masterfully
acted by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The opening song discloses the main theme of the film: death and its
implications. The film doesn’t fade from black straight to the clock- radio, but
instead, it fades to a greyish color and then fades to the first shot of the film. The
same technic is used in the end. A recurrent theme of the end in the beginning:
buying a new vehicle you may be buying a vehicle you will die in.

The 0.40 shot reveals the repeating idea of the film- passing time. The title of
the movie disappears the exact same moment the time changes to 7.45 -as
though it is being erased by it. Time slips through our fingers. The 0.45- 1.19
shot is still but Charlie Kaufman develops further the idea of slipping time
through the clock which is out of focus and the tight shot which shows the
reflection of Caden’s face in the mirror which matches the tone of the
melancholic conversation on the radio about the “beginning of the end”.

- “This is harsh, isn’t it?”

- “Perhaps, but truthful”

Say the voices on the radio about the poem, but also about the film itself. And
according to Charlie Kaufman the feeling of depression is only a by-product of
uncompromising honesty manifested in the film.

The character goes down to his wife Adele and his daughter Olive and the first
thing shown about Adele is that she is coughing. Near the end of the film she
dies of cancer. Again the idea of the end built in the beginning. The words of her
daughter “Mummy! Done”, coming from the toilet now obtain a double
meaning. Adele’s reaction to the green poop is very representative of her
character. Adele and Caden are complete opposites. Adele doesn’t make a big
deal out of this unlike Caden, who is obsessed about minor abnormality of his
body. The both characters are artists and as the film goes on, Caden’s theatrical
pieces get impossibly bigger and more complicated, while Adele’s paintings get
progressively smaller.

Now Adele is on the phone. The director puts her out of focus on the
background and Caden’s face is half turned-away. They are estranged, the
viewer can’t see the characters just like the characters can’t see each other or
anything beyond themselves. Being together they are in fact living their separate
lives. The TV on the background announces that 73,000 people died in the
earthquake and Caden says: “I don’t feel well”. But it isn’t sympathy for the
victims, Caden is too immersed into himself to notice what is going on around
him. “No one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own”, -
says later on the priest in the funerals.

Perhaps, the most interesting detail of the scene is the montage: the opening
scene is presented as a single day while two months pass by. The close up shots
help reveal this detail by emphasizing the clues: time on the clock, date on the
milk package. It’s the first day of autumn when Caden wakes up, September 22
as the radio turns on, the earthquake happens on October 8, Caden collects the
mail on October 15, October 2- the close up shot shows that the milk is expired,
Halloween and then “November 2” is written on the paper.

The film shows the fluidity of time. When you are a kid the time moves so
slowly but as you get older it feels like time flies. The main character feels this
transience, and the viewer feels it with him: as Caden leaves the house to pick
up the mail, the sounds coming from the inside disappear and Caden’s loneliness
is emphasized by the soundtrack. The theme of death is everywhere: on the
cover of the newspaper, in Caden’s thoughts. At the beginning of the scene, the
clock shows 7.45- the time Caden wakes up. Charlie Kaufman repeats this time
in the very last scene with the voice saying: “Now you are here, at 7:43. Now
you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...gone”.

Word Count: 754