Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman is my second favourite film of all time, and it is one that deserves to be interpreted.

This movie is the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, who's famous for writing films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich and with this film, it's clear that he wanted audience members to be able to develop their own interpretations. He very well could have included a commentary track on his Blu-Ray, but he didn't, and I can understand why he wouldn't exactly want to explain everything.

Synecdoche, New York is a film that's built around themes. There are multiple themes in the film, but each is reincorporated enough times to show a sense of validity towards them. The biggest theme in the film is death, and from that central theme of death stems other themes and ideas that this film conveys. It's not just about death; it's also about the implications of death.

It's about dying with regret knowing that you've wasted your entire life not living.
It's about dying knowing that nobody truly understood you.
It's about dying without having finished your life's work.
It's about death coming unexpectedly and without warning.

Suffice it to say this film is a little depressing, but that's just a by-product of the unflinching honesty that Charlie Kaufman presents in his film.He very well could have sugar-coated it, but then we'd have a movie that's just disingenuous, and this movie not only wants you to be thinking about the characters, but it also wants you to be thinking about yourself.

Everyone in this movie gives a great performance, especially Phillip Seymour Hoffman (RIP). The cinematography and overall directing was outstanding and this definitely a movie I recommend.

This one never gets old and even better: it changes its meaning every time depending on whatever's been going on in your own life lately.

The best film of the 2000's (not kidding) will probably never find an audience beyond the arthouse crowd because everyone else was busy obsessing about The Dark Knight or some shit at the time.

Even a lot of of critics needed a few more years to get the memo. You won't even find this one in a whole lot of "best of 2000's" lists either. Not that it would mean a lot anyway - these lists aren't made up to recommend you great movies. They rather aim at generating ad revenue by way of evoking a sense of nostalgia in most readers. You can't do that with movies they haven't seen.

Yeah, screw that and seriously, if you didn't get the chance back then, do yourself a favor and give this one a try now.

Gotta give a trigger warning for profound existential dread though. If you require your movies to be nice and uplifting, this one's not for you. Better watch Avatar or some sh** instead so you don't run the risk of actually feeling something.

This truly is a film about everything, and everyone. It is a film about conscious existence and subconscious being, a film about love, a film about death, and the art and emotion expanding in between the longing sonder and emptiness. Synecdoche, New York is sonder as meta-cinematic expression. Life for everyone in their individualistic existence is simply their own syncretic vision of fleeting hope hurling towards inevitable death, and that’s perfectly ok, it’s just how things are. We all live in our own fiction unbeknownst to other’s fictions, so what truly matters is the genuine emotion we individually find and connect with through it all.

Emotion is the only reality humanity is capable of grasping, and we must accept and learn to appreciate and live with that fact before it’s too late and our life has passed us by. Much alike an aspect of the film, where we constantly experience time leaps multiple years into the future without preparation or warning. A reflection of the fleeting nature of existence and how we can experience the transience of time before it’s too late, and the post-humous regret we will feel as a result of our ignorance to emotion and the inevitability of being. This isn’t a hopeless or nihilistic film, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

"Sonder — noun. (neologism) the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own."
Trying to analytically determine whether events in the film 'really happened' or not, or taking anything in this film as a literal matter of reality, is completely and utterly fruitless, and I believe goes completely against what the movie stands for. The film is intentionally crafted to defy such an undeviating analysis. It all happened, within a film! It is very much about why we make anything, why our individuality is significant. What do we hope to accomplish by creating or feeling something? How can you make anything about life if you are at that very moment?

It's a feedback loop: everything is a synecdoche; part of a greater whole.

The reality of the film is fictional because the film is aware that itself is fiction. It suggests that in some sense, every work ever made, no matter how true to life, is inescapably fiction, and that fiction is in some ways even more true to life than reality itself. We all live in our own fictional worlds, and when we task others to create or give emotion to our world, it can create a mirrored chamber of tunnel vision, a feedback loop. Caden gets lost in the mirror chamber, and the entire being of the film itself is an extension of that mirror. A masterclass of existential meta-cinema.

There are so many different subplots and aspects of this film that I could literally write a master’s thesis on it, but instead, I rather just chose to focus on the things most impactful to me in this little writeup. I could go on and on overanalyzing everything, but I think that would be counterintuitive towards the movie. This absolute masterpiece sparked lots of laughing, crying, and every emotion in between. It does what it is designed to do, force you into a metaphysical existential crisis. This is truly one of the most uniquely special films ever made, impactful in every single manner. One of the most principally powerful and important pieces of art EVER, I found myself sobbing even at parts that I didn’t even know what was going on. As the credits rolled I cried harder than I have in months, films like this are the reason I believe cinema to be the inherent soul of all artistic mediums, and the reason I find beauty in this chaotic existence. This film is going straight to my top 5 without a single fucking question or doubt in my mind.

Rest in peace, PSH. Your work continues to greatly impact millions of people, even after death. You are dearly cherished and missed.

And thank you Charlie Kaufman, for completely transcending the medium, and creating one of the single most important films in the history of cinema.