History Film / SynecdocheNewYork

[[NoPronunciationGuide And it's pronounced]] "sin-'''neck'''-duh-key".

** Caden gets mistaken several times as Ellen, Adele's housekeeper. Caden and Millecent, Ellen actress, eventually swap roles in the play.

-->[[spoiler:'''Millecent''': You realize you're not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. ''Every. Single. One.'']]

** Caden gets mistaken several times as Ellen, Adele's housekeeper. Caden and Ellen eventually swap roles in the play.

-->[[spoiler:'''Ellen''': You realize you're not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. ''Every. Single. One.'']]

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Sammy is an omniscient observer who follows you everywhere, is only seen when he wants to be seen, knows all of your thoughts and feelings, genuinely cares about you regardless of your selfishness [[spoiler:and dies when no longer needed by Caden]] he in all pourposes is this universes version of God. The fact his name is Sammy (translateable from Hebrew to literally mean "Name of God" supports this)

* AdultFear: The idea the film was built around was that it be a horror movie about the things people are really scared about:
** Fear of poor health? ''Constantly has bizarre ailments''.
** Fear of cancer? ''Even examines his stool for blood''.
** Fear of loneliness? ''His wife and daughter go to Germany without him''.
** Fear of sexual inadequacy? ''He get upset both before and during sex on two occasions, leading to guilt.''
** Fear of [[spoiler:not protecting your kids? ''His daughter is taken away at four, is covered in tattoos by ten and becomes an erotic dancer, before calling him a bad parent and dying after refusing to forgive him.'']]
** Fear of [[spoiler:parental death? ''His father withers painfully to death from cancer, his mother is bludgeoned to death during a break in.'']]

----

* CrapsackWorld: The world around the main characters progressively turns more and more into a dystopia [[spoiler: culminating in an apocalypse]]. [[SleptThroughTheApocalypse Nobody seems to notice.]]

* NoodleIncidentRemark: More like Noodle [[spoiler: Apocalypse]].
* NotSoDifferent: A major point come the conclusion (but about ''everyone'' rather than the traditional hero-villain/good-evil comparison); Caden initially makes a point about how every extra is actually an individual, unique protagonist in their own story, yet by the end he discovers that regardless of individuality, everyone is the same when it comes to death and becoming old. A blatant example can be seen between [[spoiler: Caden and Ellen, who, despite being a director and a cleaner respectively, become literally interchangeable due to their similarities.]]

* NoodleIncident: More like Noodle [[spoiler: Apocalypse]].

* Claire sounds a lot like clear, which fits with her purpose as a blank slate

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/synecdoche_8439.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300: A Creator/CharlieKaufman movie. Boy, is it ever a Charlie Kaufman movie.]]

!!Examples:

Especially notable in that the (relatively) basic plotline quickly turns bizarre when Caden hires an actor to play himself, which then extends to the people in his life too; needless to say, things turn into a mash-up of MetaFiction, RecursiveReality, PostModernism and flat out MindScrew pretty fast. Would you expect any less from a Kaufman movie?

* MeaningfulName: Caden Cotard is named after a psychological/neurological delusion that one has already died. Wife Adele has a PunnyName in that "Adele Lack Cotard" [[{{Mondegreen}} sounds like]] "a delicate art."

* CoversAlwaysLie: The British Blu Ray edition carries the blurb: "The Smash Hit Comedy of the Year!" While the film does have moments of BlackComedy and SurrealHumor, it's few and far between. And the it's definitely not a comedy in the sense of Literature/TheDivineComedy [[DownerEnding considering it's end]]. And finally, the film wasn't even a hit considering its financial failure and polarizing critical reception.

[[caption-width-right:300: A Creator/CharlieKaufman movie. Boy is it ever a Charlie Kaufman movie.]]

''Synecdoche, New York'' is a 2008 movie and directorial debut of Creator/CharlieKaufman, starring Creator/PhilipSeymourHoffman as [[MeaningfulName Caden]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion Cotard]], a struggling theatre director trying to remain optimistic and creative in spite of his marriage collapsing and [[StrawNihilist finding his life is ultimately meaningless]]. Following his successful [[AgeLift young-cast]] production of ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman'', Cotard receives a "genius grant" that gives him a nigh unlimited budget, which he decides to use on a production that accurately depicts life. Cotard then tries to perfect his artistic vision over the space of several decades, all the while struggling to maintain a relationship with numerous women and come to terms with his mortality.

* Fanservice: So downplayed it borders on FanDisservice. Caden finds a now-adult Olive working as an erotic dancer, gorgeous and with her whole body covered in tattoos. But the effect is turned heartbreaking by Caden's absolutely devastated reaction to seeing his daughter has grown up without him.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The British Blu Ray edition carries the blurb: "The Smash Hit Comedy of the Year!" While the film does have moments of BlackComedy and SurrealHumor, it's few and far between. And the it's definitely not a comedy in the sense of Literature/TheDivineComedy [[DownerEnding considering it's end]].

** One theory behind this is that we're seeing things from Caden's perspective, so we see him as an ugly failure and the women as idealised beauties.

* MindScrew: A major understatement. Many interpretations exist, but one internally consistent possibility is that [[spoiler: the whole movie consists of a mishmash of memories (of variable accuracy), fantasies, fears, and memories of previous fantasies/fears that go through Caden's mind near the end of his life (i.e. this is his deathbed experience of his "life flashing before him")]].

** It's true- but only if you've read every book Charlie Kaufman's ever read.

%%* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: Sammy.]] [[MindScrew Maybe]].

* GainaxEnding: "Die."

* KavorkaMan: Caden starts out fat and gets progressively uglier over the course of the movie, not to mention being a charismatic black hole. Yet he somehow manages to reel in girlfriends/wives played by Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, and Creator/EmilyWatson.

** The time skips even affect Caden's memory, who angrily confronts Maria about tattooing Olive with, "SHE'S A FOUR YEAR OLD!" Maria replies that Olive recently turned eleven years old.
TraumaCongaLine: Caden Cotard ends up experiencing basically every bad thing that could ever happen to a person over a lifetime other than being physically attacked or losing a limb.

* ApocalypseHow: [[spoiler: Society collapses utterly over the course of the film, we never find out how or why. It's a kind of existential joke, usually meditations on mortality have the message "You will die and the world will carry on, and you have to accept that," but in this case the world dies and Caden has to carry on, more bewildered than ever.]]
* ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: The [=MacArthur=] Genius grant seems to provide Caden with this.

* CaptainOblivious: Built into Caden as a result of his incredibly nervous and death obsessed mind. He fails to even [[spoiler: notice the extremely large tattoo on the woman he's married to.]]

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Everyone is dead, save for one woman. Caden dies just before he can even vocalize how to complete his life's work. The only silver lining is that he wasn't alone during his final moments.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: You can see Caden's double in the background even before he gets the grant.
** When discussing his version of ''Theatre/DeathOfASalesman'' he explains his reasons for casting young actors as old people. By the end of the film the cast have aged about 30 years. And we're shown [[spoiler:the final scene of the play, which ends with death]].

* IronicEcho: [[spoiler:After Hazel breaks Caden's heart, he tries to jump to his death, but it prevented. Eventually, Hazel falls for Caden again, breaking Sammy's heart and causing him to jump from the replica of the same building.]]

* NotSoDifferent: A major point come the conclusion (but about ''everyone'' rather than the traditional hero-villain/good-evil comparison); Caden initially makes a point about how every extra is actually an individual, unique protagonist in their own story, yet by the end he discovers that regardless of individuality, everyone is the same when it comes to death and becoming old. A blatant example can be seen between [[spoiler: Caden and Ellen, who, despite being a director and a cleaner respectively, literally interchangeable due to their similarities.]]

* RecursiveReality: TheMovie.
** Even the warehouse map contains a miniature version of the warehouse they're in.

* ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:Caden decides to make a replica of Schenectady and its inhabitants to make an accurate play on life and death; he ends up spending the rest of his life perfecting it, it ends up falling apart, all of his actors inexplicably die, and Caden finally realizes how to perfect his masterpiece, only to die right before revealing it.]]
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Much like his other directorial film, Anomalisa, there are elements of both. [[spoiler: The very end of this film, however, is a lot more cynical than the bittersweet end of the other.]]

* TraumaCongaLine: Caden Cotard ends up experiencing basically every bad thing that could ever happen to a person over a lifetime other than being physically attacked or losing a limb.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The British Blu Ray edition carries the blurb: "The Smash Hit Comedy of the Year!"
** Maybe it meant "comedy" in the same way ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' used it...

%%* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: Sammy.]]

* ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:Caden decides to make a replica of Schenectady and its inhabitants to make an accurate play on life and death; he ends up spending decades perfecting it, it ends up falling apart, all of his actors inexplicably die, and Caden finally realizes how to perfect his masterpiece, only to die before revealing it.]]
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Much like his other directorial film, Anomalisa, there are elements of both.

* BlackHumor: The story of the writer Caden's therapist tells him about is so outlandishly depressing and shocking that it shoots the moon and lands down on actually kind of hilarious, especially since she's so excited to talk about it that he can't say anything without being interrupted:
-->Caden: I wanted to ask you, how old are kids when they start to write--?
-->Therapist: There's an absolutely brilliant novel written by a 4-year-old. Little Winky by Horace Azpiaz.
-->Caden: That's cute-
-->Therapist: Oh, hardly. Little Winky is a virulent anti-Semite. The story follows his initiation into the Klan, his immersion in the pornographic snuff industry, and his ultimate degradation at the hands of a black ex-convict named [[OverlyLongName Eric Washington Jackson Jones Johnson]]
-->Caden: Written by a four-year-ol--?
-->Therapist: [[OverlyLongName -Jefferson.]]
-->Caden: Wow. W-Written by a four-year-old??
-->Therapist: Well, Azpiazu killed himself when he was five.