Film Synecdoche, New York

The Dec. 9 edition of the Colbert Report had Kaufman talking about Synecdoche, New York. Predictably, Colbert made jokes every time his guest started to say something interesting. There was one thing though. Kaufman said that there was a theater warehouse that was a replica of the warehouse that contained the life sized replica of New York inside it inside the "first and original" warehouse (which I remember), but he said even that replica warehouse contained a life sized replica of New York inside it along with its own replica warehouse, and on and on (which I don't remember).

I guess the movie is temporally and spatially impossible to begin with, even as I remember it, but perhaps the idea that infinite replicas can exist of the same essential thing as part of one person's attempt to understand their own life and suffering is relevant? Philip Seymour Hoffman's character seems to be a male-female chimera (this dual-sex chimera concept is mentioned in the film) in that his life overlaps with Ellen's (as his dying daughter's accusations that he had a sexual relationship with "Eric," Ellen's significant other, attests). Is his play--where infinite projections of his own life exist (as alluded to by Kaufman on Cobert), yet which contains characters with their own independent lives that impact Philip Seymour Hoffman's character's own life--a symbol of constant self-insemination throughout life (an ability of a male-female chimera)?

Is what Kaufman is saying is that human existence is an endless multitude of illusory and contradictory self-projections onto people and the environment made by us in an attempt to make sense of our own being, and that those illusions take on a life of their own we don't control, which are then in turn used by us to define ourselves? Recall that Keener's character says somethin like "It's all just a projection anyways, right? The whole romantic love thing." Eh, maybe it's just me projecting myself into the movie.

The relevance of Hoffman's character as a director rather than something else plays a part in this interpretation, too. Though he directs the action of his play (as a representation of his life) Hoffman's character is also directed by it. He is a synecdoche, a part that represents a whole--yet he is part and parcel of that whole at the same time (in the synedoche employing phrase, "the sails crossed the seas," "sails" represents "ships," yet a ship is defined in part by it's sails. See what I mean?) That kind of encoded self-reflexiveness is definitely Kaufman's style. Kaufman also said on Colbert that there's no right interpretation of the film. That aside, there are interpretations of any art work that make a greater number of the relevant elements of the artwork unify symbolically as a coherent comment or perspective than other interpretations.

I'm going to need to see it again to come to a conclusion about the burning house (perpetual destruction?) and the roles of some of the other characters.