Synecdoche, New York

Caden Cotard performs mundane theater work and struggles with physical illness and existential despair. Life feels fragmented and unfulfilled.

Themes of mortality, art, and the search for meaning are introduced. Caden’s obsession with authenticity and understanding life is hinted.

Caden faces personal and professional struggles: his marriage falters, his daughter Olive grows distant, and he battles creative stagnation. Stakes are established.

Caden receives the opportunity to create a massive, all-encompassing theater project that mirrors life itself. The line between art and reality begins to blur.

Caden wonders if he can capture the entirety of life in art. He struggles with his own mortality, relationships, and the overwhelming scope of his vision.

Caden fully commits to the theater project, casting actors to play everyone he knows and constructing a massive replica of New York. His life and the play become inseparable.

Through the interactions of actors and real-life relationships, Caden explores love, regret, and mortality. His connection with Hazel and his daughter Olive evolves.

The theater project becomes an all-consuming multiverse, with nested layers of reality and time. Absurd, surreal, and poignant moments abound as life imitates art.

Caden confronts the enormity of his project and mortality. Life spirals, relationships fracture, and his obsession threatens to consume him, raising the stakes emotionally and narratively.

Time, illness, and personal failings close in. The line between reality and performance blurs further, isolating Caden and complicating his relationships.

Caden faces the ultimate confrontation with mortality and incompleteness. His relationships are strained or severed; the theater project feels infinite and uncontainable.

Caden reflects on life, love, and impermanence. He accepts the impossibility of controlling or fully capturing existence, gaining poignant insight.

Caden embraces mortality and human imperfection, letting go of obsessive control and seeking authentic connection through his art and relationships.

Caden completes his life and theatrical journey with a tender acceptance of mortality and imperfection. Life’s beauty is found in its fleeting, chaotic moments.

Caden lies in his final moments, reconciled with life’s impermanence and the art he created, surrounded by echoes of human connection and existential reflection.