Schenectady

I watched Synecdoche, New York again last night, and I now understand more of the layering and role-switching that takes place at the end of the movie. I still do not understand the full content of the film, though. Really, I'm sort of lost even as to what direction it goes in and what the underlying structure is.

Some of what I said yesterday doesn't feel exactly right anymore, and much of it seems as though it was never meant to be quite as mysterious as it was to me upon first viewing. Then again, I've never been very good at all at these puzzle-type movies. And in a way, I'm worried that Synecdoche is a puzzle that was never meant to be solved. I don't know. But I'm going to try to figure it out, nonetheless.

I'm being forced to increasingly question whether or not anything we see in the film can be taken literally. My strong first impression was that it couldn't, that everything on the screen was being filtered through the lens of someone's mind -- probably Caden's.

Last night, when the end credits started, I flipped back a few chapters and watched the last few scenes again. I can follow everything pretty well until Caden says that he's out of ideas and that he's dead (I think it's "dead" and not "done." I'll have to check the script when it arrives this evening). He takes the part of Ellen, and then everything swiftly breaks down. I can take nothing out of these final scenes but confusion.

The problems are made clear for me by one short scene in particular: The voice in Caden's ear tells him to pick up a note from Adele, which turns out not to be from Adele at all. A male voiceover reading the note informs us that Adele has died. Caden looks at a set of picture frames next to him, which contain pictures of 1) his daughter, 2) Adele, with some other person cut mostly out, 3) Hazel, 4) an old man (I think his father), and 5) an old woman (I think his mother).

Is he still playing as Ellen in that scene? It wouldn't make much sense unless these five people were part of Ellen's life instead of his own. Which I can't discount as a possibility, because I really am confused.

We see Ellen, who is still playing the part of Caden, in bed with Eric, and in the kitchen with him, speaking to him. ("Everything is everything.") Is this supposed to mean that Caden really did have an affair with a man? I got the sense at first that his admission to Olive on her deathbed was not sincere, that he was merely seeking forgiveness so that peace could be made between them in the seconds before she passed away.

I noticed one of Caden's notes this time around, though, and it seems that his suppressed homosexuality may be more of an issue than I'd realized. Scrawled in his near-illegible hand was (if I'm not mistaken) "I think I might be gay." We also hear some things from Caden that suggest that he feels effeminate, or that he's had some internal struggle over whether or not he should have been a woman. They're not pervasive, which led me to believe that they were merely ponderous thoughts. But they are there and given the shifts that take place at the end of the movie, I have to try to examine their importance.

I have a vague notion that this doubt about his sexuality and gender may be manifesting itself in the story in the form of the various actors and roles that revolve around Caden, though it still doesn't add up to something that makes sense to me.

Of course, if one of the big issues in the movie -- or Caden's life -- is that he is, in fact, gay, I think the most important word I've used in the last few paragraphs is "suppressed." Caden lives in a world full of women. He interacts with them, almost exclusively, it seems. Just look at the top acting credits and this becomes very evident. We hear mention of Eric once, and see him three times, all in adjacent shots, and it's not Caden who is with him; it's Ellen, playing (as far as I can tell) the part of Caden.

Ellen says that she feels she somehow disappointed him, and we see Adele and hear her saying that people always disappoint you after you know them for a while. Does this imply that Caden and Eric have been together for a while?

I really do not know.

On the other side of this role-swap, you've got Caden taking instructions from Ellen on how to be her and how to feel the things she feels. At one point, she expresses regret that she never had kids. She relates a memory of her and her mother (if I understand correctly) where she's making a promise that she'll one day take her own daughter on a picnic just like the one they were having. She is greatly saddened by having failed to make this dream come true.

As Caden, she then cries and asks out loud where her (his) daughter is. It's very poignant, but confusing. The trick here, I believe is trying to separate the things she is saying to Caden through the earpiece and the things she is saying as Caden. It's so blurred together, it becomes even more difficult to reject the suggestion that they are somehow two sides of the same person.

If that is the case, then that would lead me to the conclusion that Sammy is yet another splinter of Caden's psyche.

Strange, isn't it, how the only people we ever see Caden taking auditions for are the two who want to play the part of Caden himself?

It would make other things in the movie make sense. For instance, all the times we see Sammy watching Caden, and the way Sammy appears to know everything about Caden, including his thoughts.

If I had to hazard a rough guess as to how everything would come together in this setup, I would say that Sammy would be some part of Caden's mind that he created to make himself more likeable. He is an act that he puts on, the part of himself that he decides to show to the world after he comes to the conclusion that his life will never be what he wants it to be if he lets his real self show through.

Sammy is the fun part, the joyous part, maybe also the sexual part.

This may be why Hazel seems to fall for Sammy, and then shifts her affections to Caden. She even states that she only wanted Sammy so she could get to Caden. She fell in love with the facade because it was easier to do, but ultimately, she realizes that it truly is the person inside him that she loves.

There are extra layers that would seem to complicate this line of thought; what about the man who plays Sammy? And what about Tammy's simulation of Hazel? Perhaps the latter could be a result of the unavoidable discovery that Hazel, just like everyone else, is more than she seems to be at first.

If Sammy is the outward persona, I'd guess that Ellen is the less socially acceptable parts of his sexual identity. That's why we only see her with Eric. And that's also why she does not become recognized until the end of the film. She has been repressed or suppressed -- who can say which -- but as Caden nears death, he allows himself to see her.

But again, this explanation is not without comlications. What do we then make of the dream with Ellen and her mother? Why does she lament over never having had a child if she is a part of Caden, who has two daughters? I'm left totally unsure about how much validity this theory may have.

What I'm worried about is that there is no way to put fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. More specifically, I can't completely remove the idea from my mind that perhaps the whole movie -- or most of it, at least -- is some dying dream. Life flashing before his eyes. Maybe a dying man is merely trying to make sense of his life in whatever way he can. That would disappoint me in many ways; it's too David-Lynch for my taste. Charlie Kaufman, I believe, is beyond that. I want to have hope that there's a key to all of this somewhere, but that I just haven't found it yet.

All of the playing with time that goes on seems to be the means to its own ends, but one observation has me wondering if there might be a clue in them somewhere; Caden wakes up at 7:45 at the beginning of the movie, and before he dies at the end, he sees a clock spraypainted onto a wall with the hands indicating 7:45 as well.

Hazel says that the end is built into the beginning. I don't know what to make of this connection, but it must mean something, right?

I just came across an interview with Charlie Kaufman wherein he says that the film is not a dream. This leaves me hopeful, but saying that it's not a dream isn't exclusive enough for me to understand what the movie is or is not.

Anyway, I'm not going to go quite to the same lengths in writing today as I did yesterday. I'm still considering a lot of things and should probably take some time to let my thoughts percolate a bit before putting them down in writing. (Maybe I should have thought of that before writing all of this bullshit, no?)

I'll close with a lovely list of random ideas, observations, and questions that have popped up in my head:

1. So many scenes fly by so quickly that I basically missed them the first time I watched. I'm sure there were things I missed the second time as well. One such scene: Caden uses his cane to push up a flap on a "Map to Warehouse #2" lying on the ground. Under the flap is a smaller "Map to Warehouse #2" with a flap in the same relative location. When he pushes up that flap, there is (we must assume, since it's too small to really make out the details) an even smaller copy of the map. Like a tunnel of mirrors.
2. What the hell is with Caden's father randomly walking into the room and saying, "Hey, kiddos," when (I think) Caden and Adele are discussing her going to Germany in the kitchen?
3. The house is on fire and it still makes me laugh, but I still haven't decided what it is I believe it's intended to mean.
4. The titles he chooses for his play are 1) Simulacrum, 2) Flawed Light of Love and Grief, 3) Unknown, Unkissed, and Lost, 4) The Obscure Moon Lighting an Obscure World, and 5) Infectious Diseases in Cattle
5. At the movie's end, Caden (as Ellen) mentions that the buildings in the "theater" are full of other people's dreams and memories, and that he would never know them. Strange, vague idea: What if the buildings are people, or perhaps representations of their lives? Recall the scene wherein Caden orders one building set to be walled up, that set being the one with Claire flirting with another actor. He's done being a part of her life, so... the walls get built. And what would that mean for Hazel's burning home?
6. Who is the person who is partially cut out of the picture of Adele that Caden looks at when he finds out that she died?
7. Does Caden really marry Claire? I don't have a lot of reasons to question this, but my gut tells me maybe I should.
8. Why is Caden so distant from Ariel? Why does he act like Olive is basically the only real daughter he has?
9. Of what significance is Sammy's suicide?
10. Why are there paintings of Ellen in Adele's collection?
11. What is with the cow and sheep cartoons?
12. Of what significance is cleaning?

I'm going to be digging through the shooting script this evening, and a set of earlier scripts I found. Maybe I'll find some clues there.