It was supposed to be a horror movie! ? The fantastical world depicted by “Synecdoche, New York”

A story that keeps multiplying inward

``Synecdoche, New York'' is a story about a playwright (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is suffering from life's hardships such as aging and anxiety, and before he knows it, he takes on the challenge of creating a spectacular stage play that seems to take a bird's-eye view of life and everyday life. There's no script there. Instead, a large number of extras are mobilized on a vast site, and the production is developed by handing each person a memo with settings and lines written on it every day.

What appears on this stadium-sized stage is not so much a story as a microcosm of the world. There is an actor playing his role, and inside him a further miniature version of his inner world unfolds. There are also cases where the main character, who has the role of director, somehow ends up playing the role of a completely different person. Everything looks like a matryoshka doll, and the staff created the diagrams in advance to check the structure of the piece while proceeding with production.

“Synecdoche, New York” (C)2008 KIMMEL DISTRIBUTION, LLC All Rights Reserved

I apologize for the inconvenience, but this was the third time for me to watch this work. What I painfully realized was that my impression of a movie changes drastically every time I watch it. Of course, this means that the level of urgency changes depending on the age of the recipient, but more than that, the Arrival received from the work can appear completely different depending on the point of view and the state of one's own consciousness.

This is all due to the structure, which has many layers like this matryoshka. In fact, that seems to have been Kaufman's aim. In a theatrical production, the impression changes and evolves each time like a living thing, but in a movie, the same thing happens over and over again. Once completed, no further changes will occur.

“Synecdoche, New York” (C)2008 KIMMEL DISTRIBUTION, LLC All Rights Reserved

So, what can we do to breathe life into this work and make it into a work that brings new discoveries each time we look at it? Kaufman's unique answer to this proposition was ``Synecdoche, New York,'' which encompasses life itself with its overflowing themes and motifs.

Every time I look at it, I get a different way of interpreting it.