But before I move on with the key elements of the film, I'd like us to take a moment with this uncanny word synecdoche.
Dictionary.com writes:
1.
a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole fora part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.
So a part is substituted for a whole or the whole is substituted for a part. In the film, Caden's whole life is put into as a part into the theater play, or the theater play as a whole is a part of Caden's life. Instead of trekking back and worth with this restless logic on which part is the part and which whole is whole, we can collapse the distinctions simply to this: Caden externalizes himself in his play. In fact, as any artist does, he or she declares for the public a mindfully crafted product to the testament of their creativity and to the inspiration of others. It is only by this declaration that others can share in their understanding and discoveries. However, as something that happens constantly, different and often contradictory interpretations arise from the audience regarding the artist's work. Now, since art is not philosophy, artists are not required to explicate in clear and logical terms the content of their thoughts and experiences, primarily because they are concerned with the particularities of the content (e.g. as a sculptor I'm concerned with bringing out the uniqueness of this body before in its own voice as it comes to me, not as it may be objectively or collectively experienced). All this is to say, that artist do need to pay some heed to the language related to their work, especially if the art is language-based (as a movie is because it has dialogue, script, etc). Some artists may choose to be mysterious and reclusive, saying little or nothing about their work, but this does not negate the fact that the work still needs to speak for itself.
What language or words does Cotard choose to put into his play? Or, generally what content does he intend? Himself. If Hamlet were a playwright, Caden Cotard would be him. He is so sunk down into himself that he makes no concealment, whether metaphorically or anagogically, of the content--he literally just implants himself into his own play and all the messiness that comes with it. It is quite remarkable, if one considers it, it is as if Shakespeare decided to put on a play about himself and all his relationships, work and anxieties. The project would demand that a Globe Theatre would be built within the Globe Theatre (which is something that happens in Synecdoche, with ever growing meta-plays on Cotard's play about himself manifests ever widening physical stages within stages).
Throughout the film, Cotard repeatedly says he wants to make something real. This is, quite rightly, the highest aspiration an artist could strive for. Paradoxically, however, should an artist achieve the perfect real (note that I don't write 'realism', since that can be attained without abandoning the aesthetic dimension, albeit with diminished results), they would have negated their artwork and renounced all essence as an artist. There would be at that point nothing more than pure copying of what already is, and that seems to be in line with didactic historiology than creative self-expression of the communal spirit.
Naïve as Cotard may be on this point, he nonetheless embodies the struggle of every artist to bring to life their creations. In the depths of the heart of any maker is the promethean desire to see life flourish. But this desire is thwarted by the fact that no one creator can genuinely gift life into something--that is reserved for the thing itself. Instead the promethean creators must, as the tale goes, steal the fire from higher powers and use the available means to their advantage. White Cotard is given virtually limitless resources for his task, his promethean desires have actually blinded him to the more essential factor of art--which is something the story about Prometheus misses completely--and that is that art is a communal activity.
While some of us are creators, we are all observers. Makers make no mistake to use this as their resource. While it is the focal point of their strength as artists, it is also an invitation to misinterpretation and inconsistency. As Cotard is genuinely taken by his project and struggles with it intensely, nobody else seems to share his aesthetic mission. This is because, as Cotard has opted for the real thing for his composition, he has simultaneously relinquished the swath of artistic resources that essentially come with creating art, especially language based. This is the particularity of things--the analogies, metaphors, symbols, sign and stories that fuel a work of art with past artworks and history and puts the contemporary in communion with the ancient. By focusing on his literal self he has paradoxically achieved the opposite effect, he has annulled the singularity of his being by withholding any artistic connection. Cotard is not only obscure and generic in his play, he is incomparably opaque and sightlessly translucent. (Just notice the immediate effect when the priest has his speech during the "fake" funeral of Cotard's father, when it is directed by Cotard's substitute Ellen Bascomb / Millicent Weems (played by Dianne Wiest). Here Weems departs from Cotard's stark real policy and implements an invigorating rhetoric speech, and the effect staggers even Cotard himself--this is the power of art, it's own realness.)
Since Cotard is bereft of the traditional pantheon of art--he turns to fetters the means by which he can communicate with his partners, actors, let alone the audience--his affirmative action is to fill the whole content of the play with his very own and literal negativity, that is, his self. This is not only a mistake as an artist, but a symptom of something gravely concocted in his mind. I shall now turn to focus on this point of self-obsession, and how it has infiltrated the work.
Cotard repeatedly asks the people close to him, "Do you know what loneliness feels like?" None of his relationships are able to expel him from his tireless interest in his loneliness. Everything Cotard does is in the interest of Cotard, even though he expresses a desire to make an artwork that will shake the art world, he is still at the helm of this project (and no less narcissistic since he puts himself in his play).
At the heart of his desire is the pleasure to see himself repeated in others. As I've already mentioned, Cotard does this explicitly by repeating himself in his play for everybody else to oppressively participate in. This will not yield him even a little bit of satisfaction, since everybody around him are employed to mirror his image, and therefore they aren't doing it out of their own willingness or respect for him.
When the pleasure-seeking individual no longer feels himself to be at the center of the world--to be everything--the moment he no longer is the object of everyone's desire, he feels nothing. In actuality, he is nothing, since everything he staked his love for was the return of this love for himself in others. He is crushed not only by the indifference of others to him, but by his own singular nothingness. His promethean reach for life and taking possession of it has, in its moment of grasping, turned to laying hold of death and he feels in its nothingness the cold compulsion of its loss. Cotard is drowning in the vortex of his own compulsive negativity--a self-repeating failure.
His course of action, like a Hamlet, is to plunge deeper and take as much of the world with him into this black hole. For Cotard, his desire doesn't appear as if it was produced by him, it feels like an alien necessity bearing down on him. The ruptures with his lovers do not help to see him out of this problems, but exasperate his loneliness qua need to be reified by others. Cotard never manages to eject himself out of this consciousness that is immersed in its desires but remains unaware of his self-alienating search for pleasure.
Towards the end, Cotard does, however implicitly, find a way out of his loop, but at the behest of his substitute director. Albeit, this solution is one that negates Cotard himself and turns him into something like a virtuous saint. His focus finally shifts away from himself and into the character of the cleaning lady Ellen Bascomb. He does her work, he lives her failures and her fears, and he even dies her death. To Cotards mercy he did manage to leave the web of his own madness for the completely contingent, frail life of another.
Cotard may have made into the other extreme of obsession, but this has offered no real redemption of him as a person. What remains of his monstrous play is now of little interest to us, since its life-blood, however corrupt, has ebbed its last. The tragedy has now drawn its curtain. But for us, the audience, this is a wonderful and cathartic film into the life of someone so caught up with themselves. Which reminds us that in our hours of despair and loneliness we are not alone even when everything in experience seem to point that way, but actually share into the universal condition of being human.
Where even the adamant Sammy, who is something of a soulmate to Cotard, cannot compete with the depth of self-obsession that his hero has. Sammy makes the jump because he is able to realize the logical conclusion of Cotard's way of being: 'if my desires are no fulfilled, then I am nothing.' But Cotard does transform his desire, albeit still contradictory and self-defeating, towards the end into something a little more humane.
As a digression in the end, I recently saw Kaufmann's Adaptation, which seems to me something of a polar opposite to Synecdoche. It is an earlier work and Kaufmann (the screenwriter) is the center-piece of the film. It fails exactly where Synecdoche succeeds. Where Kaufmann employs his literal (quasi-literal?) self into the film, the aesthetic distance between the art and the audience is crippled and largely lost. Whereas in Synecdoche we can approach and identify with the utterly unrealistic Cotard for his failures because there is a core element of realness in the fiction. In Adaptation, by contrast, the main story-line is boring, pretentious, and overly meta, which yields a bland and shallow fiction stitched awkwardly to the realism the film purports to. The saving graces of the latter are the side-stories, which make it somewhat compelling, but only for brief moments. The fact that the characters say that Kaufmann's script in the film is funny (which, is a comment of the film on itself you will note) is an insult to the audience. Compared to the earlier Being John Malkovich which was playful and hilarous, I found very little humor in this film (Adaptation); of what little there was is owed to the actors' efforts in their rendering of the quips and behaviours. The character of Kaufmann is a hysterical, sycophantic and mediocre personality, which, when compared to Cotard, pales to a Gildenstern taking on the role of a Hamlet.
A note on the stills: The stills/screenshots from the film in this post are considered by the author of the blog to be in cooperation with the principle of fair use for bloggers. This is a theoretical commentary on the film that uses a very small portion of its imagery, in relation to the whole of the copyrighted work. Furthermore, the use of the movie stills are not intended to have any effect on the potential marked or value of the film. There is not being set up a competing product or reducing the size of the marked for this film, merely the advancement of its theoretical study.
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