#just as the doctor/the lack thereof crafted her growing up

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

you ever think about how amy pond had more agency in birthing the TARDIS and the Doctor than she did River and want to chew drywall?

[kate-sinclaire]

the baby announcement (maxwell x mc)

Author Note: An inspired scene that stems from my love of New Girl. I honestly couldn’t NOT write this. Anyhow. Here we go. This takes place after my last fiction. If you want to read that, it will be attached below:

hey, baby, I think I wanna marry you (maxwell x mc)

Book: The Royal Heir/The Royal Romance

Pairing: Maxwell x MC (Emily Beaumont)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Emily and Maxwell continue to try for an heir while the gang becomes over protective of their mom to be.

NOTE/WARNING: This piece contains potential triggers, such as pregnancy concerns and issues. Please take care in reading if this is a trigger for you.

Tags: @itsbrindleybinch

Word Count: 1432

Comment or message if you’d like to be tagged in future Maxwell fics/TRH/TRR fics.

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Pixelberry Studios (minus, for the most part, Emily), I’m just borrowing them. Some events, however, may not be canonical, rather imaginative scenarios. I also do not own the image. Gif found here.

--

“Emily, please be careful,” Bertrand sighed, pulling out the chair as the young duchess sat at the dining table. She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. Maxwell suppressed a scoff. He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I apologize, being a father has made me...protective.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m not pregnant yet. Coffee please?” she asked, looking up at Drake expectantly. He pursed his lips together and stared at her cautiously.

"How about some orange juice," he offered slowly. "Or um...water? You like water."

"Drake," she warned, her voice growing impatient.

"I made hot cocoa!" Hana sang from behind him, placing her famous marshmallow mountain topped hot chocolate in front of Emily as an all too innocent smile played on her lips.

Emily took a tentative sip, keeping her eyes set on her best friend. "That was convenient timing," she murmured, though she couldn't hide her blissful expression as her entire body warmed.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Hana replied casually, walking behind the kitchen counter. "I made Maxwell one, as well."

"God, you're the best," Maxwell grinned, eagerly taking hold of the matching campfire mug.

“You guys, I’m not pregnant yet. You don’t need to worry about me so much. I fought off deadly assassins.”

“With help,” Olivia chimed in with a smirk as she entered the room. “But never mind that. Emily, would you like to accompany me out of this godforsaken cabin? I promise that I’ll let you breathe all by yourself.”

Without a second’s hesitation, Emily joined her by the door and bit back a grin at the worried exchanges. “That sounds lovely, Olivia, thank you.”

“I don’t-” Drake started.

“I’m not so sure-” Liam murmured.

“I feel like-” Hanna winced.

“Enough!” Olivia exclaimed, slamming her palm on the table, sending echoes throughout the kitchen. The entire group startled. “Emily Beaumont is a strong, self-sufficient woman. She does not need to be coddled like an infant just because she is trying to have one.” Emily stared at her, stunned, and then looked back at the group with resolve.

“Thank you, Olivia. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go run errands with my best friend.”

“Well I wouldn’t go that far-”

“Bye gang!” Emily grinned, grabbing Olivia by the arm and closing the door behind them. Everyone exchanged concerned glances.

“Is it just me or is Olivia really scary when she’s protective?” Maxwell muttered after a moment of silence, taking another drink of his cocoa. Everyone collectively nodded.

--

After walking a bit, Emily stopped and let out a sigh. Olivia glanced at her curiously, stepping beside her. “Can I be honest about something?”

“As opposed to what you’ve been doing since I met you?” Olivia smirked. Emily rolled her eyes in response and Olivia sighed with a nod.

“I’m scared that I’m not going to get pregnant.”

“What?” Olivia asked, genuinely shocked. “Emily, you can’t be serious. You just started trying.”

“Well, it’s been a...a while. And everyone has been treating me like I should be pregnant by now. I notice everyone’s worried glances, especially other nobles’. Last time I saw the paparazzi, I got hounded about my fears regarding the pregnancy or...lack thereof. And honestly, I’m kinda freaking out a little bit.” Emily’s eyes started watering and she quickly wiped away any trace of her tears. “God, sorry, I didn’t think I was going to break down.”

“You just started trying, Emily. I don’t know if you remember this, but Liam asked you to produce an heir a month ago. Do you realize how sudden that is?”

“I guess...”

“And it takes some couples longer than others to conceive. It’s not abnormal for you to be experiencing this kind of thing.”

“But we try so much,” Emily sighed. “Like...so much.”

“Okay.”

“No, really. So much.”

“I get it.”

“I just feel like if it isn’t going to happen now, maybe it won’t ever.” 

“I don’t know what you’re going through, Emily, but I can promise you this: no matter what happens, you have...” she winced and swallowed hard. “Amazing, loving friends who will be there for you no matter what. Including me. And you have...Maxwell. Who I’m sure loves you very much.”

“He does,” Emily sighed, wiping her eyes again.

“You don’t have anything to worry about. Okay?” Olivia’s voice softened for the first time in...ever since Emily had known her. She sniffled and nodded, wrapping her arms around her neck. Olivia let out a startled sound before hesitantly returning the hug. “Now, let’s forget about babies for a bit.”

“Where are we going?”

“The only place I can go after comforting someone: shooting.”

--

Meanwhile, back in Valtoria...

Maxwell let out a sigh as he played with Pip and Pup absentmindedly in the sun room, his gaze roaming to the mountaintops ahead of them. It was weird being away from his wife at all, these days, and it felt...lonely, even though he was with his friends and two adorable, cuddly creatures. Drake nursed a whiskey over by the telescope and looked over at Liam who stood reading a novel at one of Emily’s bookshelves.

“This is boring,” Max finally said.

“Thanks,” Drake replied with a scoff.

“No, I mean. Who even were we before Emily came into our lives?”

“Bored,” Drake agreed.

“Incomplete,” Hanna nodded.

“Lost,” Liam added, something flickering over his expression. Something Maxwell chose to aptly ignore.

“Exactly. And now here we are without her and we’re nothing. She’s the glue that holds us all together.”

“I think that’s a little dramatic,” Drake replied. “But you’re right. It’s not the same without her. And it’s our fault. We scared her away with our worrying.”

“You guys did. For the record, I’ve been a rock through this.” Max smirked, prompting a collective eye roll. “But yeah. It sucks. Maybe we should call her and apologize.”

“We can’t, she left her phone,” Hanna pointed at the table.

“What?” Panic began to race through him. “What if she gets into trouble? What if I get into trouble? I’m always in trouble!”

“Maxwell, calm down,” Liam laughed. “She’s fine. She’s perfectly capable of handling herself. And she has Olivia with her, remember?”

“That almost makes it worse!”

“Maxwell, she’s fine-”

As if on cue, Emily’s phone rang. Maxwell cautiously approached it and shook his head. “I can’t answer.”

“I will,” Hanna smiled dutifully. “Hello?”

“Hello, Lady Beaumont? This is Doctor Ramirez. Congratulations, you’re pregnant!”

“WHAT?!” Hanna squealed. “Oh my god!”

“Wait, who is this?”

“WHO IS IT?” Maxwell practically screamed.

“This is Hanna Lee. Sorry, can you pretty please call back so I can let Maxwell answer?”

“Why isn’t Emily answering her phone?” the doctor asked, confused. Then she sighed. “Okay, I’ll call back. Wait, why can’t I just talk to him now?”

Hanna hung up and grinned, handing the phone back to Maxwell. “I think you’ll want to answer whoever calls next.” He squirmed under her constant smile.

“Okay...”

Sure enough, the phone rang again and he winced. “Hello?”

“Maxwell Beaumont?”

“The very same.”

“This is Doctor Ramirez. I called to tell you congratulations! Your wife is pregnant.”

“EMILY IS PREGNANT?!”

--

After a long day of archery and blade throwing, Emily followed Olivia back to Valtoria with a renewed sense of self. “That was exactly what I needed, thank you.”

“Violence is what everyone needs,” Olivia nodded, knowingly. Emily laughed and jogged ahead. “Wow, you’re happy.”

“I am! We never get to hang out.”

“Yeah, it’s almost as if someone crafts that perfectly...”

“You know, you talk a big game but I think you like hanging out with me.”

“Think what you like, Emily,” but a smile played at Olivia’s lips.

When they both got back, Emily walked in with a grin. “Honey, I’m hoooome.” Silence. Olivia and her exchanged a look and then she called again. “Maxwell, I’m hooooooome.” Still nothing. She glanced down and noticed rose petals trailing from the kitchen to the bedroom. Confused, she followed and her eyes widened at the sight of Maxwell with three bouquets in hand along with about a dozen others scattered throughout the room.

“Max..?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“What...?” she looked around and then he shook his head with a grin.

“We’re pregnant. You’re pregnant.”

Realization dawned on her as she stepped back. “We’re...pregnant...”

“We’re pregnant!” he pulled her into his arms and spun her around. Emily laughed as the tears came down her face. “Doctor Ramirez called and Hanna picked up. Then she called again and I picked up.”

“Oh my god, we’re pregnant.”

“We’re pregnant.”

[high-society-of-readers]

Two Beautiful

Having been roughly a week since Myers outburst. You couldn't help but wonder if the wound care nurse actually did her job and tended to the lacerations on his wrist... Dr. Loomis, having been informed of what happened, took it upon himself and instated a new rule in Myers care plan. The rule in question was that you were no longer permitted to be apart of his daily staffing or routine. Actually, you went even allowed to sit at the front counter in the nursing station anymore either.

Seeing as how you couldn't see him you could, nonetheless, look over his charting. It appears as though this was as close as you could get in terms of caring for him. Gazing around your new cramped desk in the med room all you could do was let out a soft sigh. It's only temporary but in all honesty, it was more than a little depressing. The desk was small, yet somehow, still tightly packed between two filing cabinets overflowing with unsorted paperwork and old shower sheets. 

With time to kill, you set about organizing the disorder, and mayhem that is your desk. Whilst halfway through the first filing cabinet, you stumbled upon a horde of skin assessment sheets. This would answer your inquiry on wither or not Myers wound had been properly cared for. Having a few more minutes to spare for your lunch break you set about painstakingly scanning the dates and setting aside the ones from this week. Finally, with the papers in hand, you noticed the apparent lack of documentation. 

Skin assessments were called for on a regular basis, these sheets were completed days after his self-inflicted mutilation… Enraged would be an overly generous understatement you were infuriated, they marked the skin as “clear and intact.” Reading the signature it revealed, that not only did the wound care nurse sign off on the daily evaluations, but the doctor signed a witness statement as well for their weekly assessments. This was clear proof of neglect, as you have done your job with charting the injury on your end clearly showing the injury had transpired. It's a harsh reality but this kind of care, or lack thereof, is a continuous conflict in nursing.

The thought disgusts you, but, in the past, you have turned a blind eye. Should you report the wrong person, you could very well lose your job. Times like this you wished for a form of anonymity, but even that wouldn't make a dent in the corrupted system. Having said this you had roughly a 24-hour window to report this to the nursing administrator. In this case however the doctor that signed the paperwork is well respected, you had no choice but to tend to his wound yourself... 

Should you report this, you'd surely lose your job, maybe even your license as well? You'll have to wait till the next shift before you attempt to sneak into his cell, you were pulling a double anyway. With your lunch break now over you clocked back in and got to work.

As the evening shift ended, the night shift began, you watched the other aids and nurse's left to go home. The nurse you were working with tonight usually ran late, you were depending on it. A small window of opportunity opened up. Guards from this shift were still clocking in, you had a 20-minute window to get to his cell. Grabbing the supplies you had already laid out, you rushed out of the nursing station and down the hall. 

Steps echoed off the walls waking some of the patients, cries of sorrow grew numerous with every footfall. It pained you every time you walked these halls, this came with the job, but that didn't make it any easier. The corridor seemed to darken as you neared Myers door, even the fluorescent lights started to flicker. Stopping just outside his cell with your hand hovering over the handle, is this really okay? What if he attacked you, no one knew you were there, the guards couldn't protect you. 

No, you needed to do this, this was your responsibility, to care for the weak. But this man was anything but weak, you sigh, taking hold of the latch. The door made a loud groan as you unlocked it. You made up your mind and opened the door. Light from the hall poured into the dimly lit cell as you walked in and closed the door. 

Perched on a chair sat Michael Myers, hunched over his table working on yet another mask. You smiled a little while gazing at his decorated walls, all adorned with hand-crafted masks. Looking back over ar Myers you had to swallow your surprise. No longer was he busy working, he was now staring directly at you. Seeing how you now had his full attention you spoke. "I apologize for disrupting you from your work." 

He tilted his head to the side, his favorite orange mask concealing his expression. Nervously you cleared your throat. "I read the documentation, they didn't treat your wound, did they?" His eyes shifted to his right hand, before hiding it behind his back. Michael was acting like a child who got caught doing something they shouldn't have.

You sighed heavily. "Michael I'm not going to hurt you, I just really need to take care of that wound. I don't have a lot of time, I'm not even supposed to be here." Still seeming unsure he slowly presented his right hand never breaking eye contact. It was a little unnerving, but not wanting to back down, you cautiously approached. Gently grabbing his hand you turned it over to inspect the wound, it was clearly infected. 

Promptly you got to work dabbing the antiseptic wipe to the cut and generously applying antibiotic ointment. Then you carefully bandage his wrist, looking up you freeze. You and Michale were nose to nose, his breath fanning across your face, and blue eyes half-closed. Quicky you attempted to withdraw from the closeness but were swiftly pulled back into a crushing embrace. 

As he continued to tighten his hold you gasped for breath while clawing at his back, fingers digging into this shirt. He was suffocating you, it's now you realized what a mistake you made. Colorful spots clouded your vision before it could turn a blinding white, he relaxed his arms. With a sharp gasp, you greedily gulped for air, still clinging on to him with white knuckles. Michael held you close as he gently ran his long fingers through your hair. If he didn't just try to kill you, you'd almost call this comforting... 

This was a warning it was his way of letting you know he was in control, he had every power to kill you. Settling down you rested your head against his chest listening to the steady beat of his heart. Michale's heart rate was calm, not sporadic, this was the heart of a sociopath, a killer. This was a predator, one that can put on the charade of loving affection. But this was all a game and he used "love" as a manipulative tool to get what he wanted. Once he got what he wanted he'd grow bored and cast you aside like a discarded toy. But still... You loved him;

(A/N): Thankfully in today's nursing you can now make anonymous reports of abuse and neglect. Since the movie took place only a year after 1977 when the “Board of Nursing” was first established. There still wasn't a way of having complete anonymity until a few years after. I hope you all have enjoyed this two-part series I know I enjoyed writing it! Let me know what you thought!

[inkwatch-blog]

The End, Built into the Beginning: The Psychosis and Neurosis of ‘Synecdoche, New York’

Author’s note: this essay was originally published on May 11th, 2016. It has been republished here as a sample of my work.

The Blu-Ray release for screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut film, Synecdoche, New York, does not feature a commentary track. During the press junket for the film’s release, Mr. Kaufman was asked why this is; why would a film as convoluted, as layered and complex as Synecdoche not have a commentary track? “The whole point of writing,” he responded, “is to get people to have an experience with it, and if I sit here and say, well this means this and this means this, not only is it pointless because it either means that to those people or it doesn’t, but it also gets in the way of those people having their own individual experience.” Synecdoche, New York is a film that begins with a seemingly-normal story idea - a man approaching middle age becomes obsessed with his health, while him and his wife face relationship problems - and quickly becomes something entirely different. It’s a fever dream of a film; the madness starts slow, but once you descend to Caden Cotard’s level of madness, it doesn’t relent until the credits roll - that is, until you’re dead. Synecdoche, New York is a film obsessed with the human condition, obsessed with death and life and time and the lack thereof.

The concept of time in Synecdoche, New York is featured heavily. Caden Cotard, the film’s protagonist and theater director, is a man out of time. He no longer notices weeks passing by him, too wrapped up in his own death to focus on anything else around him. This is especially relevant during the first ten minutes of the film. Somehow, these first ten minutes in Kaufman’s film feel unrelentingly normal for him, a setup for the audience to be lured in and feel comfortable before everything is twisted upside down. But watching the first ten minutes of the film, it’s obvious that Kaufman wants you to notice that something’s wrong with time. Time is the first thing we see in the film (minus a fade into gray, but that’s a topic further down the line). A clock changing from 7:44 to 7:45, and the radio alarm activates. Caden gets up and gets out of bed, and we can hear from the radio hosts that it’s September 22nd, the first day of fall. It’s important to note that Kaufman begins his film on a day that is, essentially, rooted in death. Autumn is about the end of things, and as the poetry writer guest on that radio broadcast makes clear, death is beautiful in a sweet, melancholic way. From there, Caden goes throughout his morning as normal. He gets the paper and reads about death. His wife Adele mostly ignores them, while his child Olive runs around the house. He cuts his head open after a pipe bursts and is taken to the emergency room, and he returns home that night. A seemingly normal day in the middle of a million normal days. This is what Charlie Kaufman wants you to think, but a close read of the film shows otherwise. As I mentioned, this scene opens on September 22nd, 2005. But when Caden has approached the sink in the kitchen. It’s already October 8th (as mentioned in the radio broadcast about an earthquake in Kashmir). After collecting the mail, it’s October 15th; however, the newspaper reads October 14th, signifying a day has gone by since Caden left to get the mail. In the same paper, the obituary section is dated October 17th. The milk Caden says is expired went bad on October 20th. He sits back down; it’s Halloween. Then, suddenly, November 1st on the radio, and November 2nd in the newspaper. When he reaches the hospital for stitches, Christmas decorations are hung. On the ride home from the hospital, Auld Lang Syne plays on the radio, a hint towards the new year.

This is all intentional; these are continuity errors or mishaps. Kaufman wants to set the stage for the film to be a dreamlike experience; at the same time, Caden Cotard is a man out of time; we see this throughout the entire film. Caden experiences moments where he doesn’t know how longs things have been going by. After Adele and Olive leaves, he tells Hazel, his eventual love interest and secretary at his local theater, that it’s been a week since they’ve left. In reality, it’s been a year; Hazel plays this off by saying he needs to be bought a calendar, but there’s more to this. Caden’s mind has stopped recognizing days going by, stopped recognizing that he’s aging and that the people around him are changing and growing and getting married and divorced and having children and dying. Caden recognizes none of this, and as Millicent/Ellen, his replacement director, later says, “Time is concentrated and chronology confused for [Caden].” It’s true; Caden has a hard time recognizing time going by. His daughter lives a full, if somewhat cut short due to infection, life and he never lets go of her being four years old. Hazel starts a family without Caden paying much attention. Caden and Claire get married and have a daughter in the span of seven seconds of the film. One of the most realized moments comes when one of Caden’s actors asks when an audience will be able to see the play. “It’s been seventeen years,” he says. Caden promptly ignores him, either choosing to purposefully, or not understanding his point. Time is a false concept to Caden; he doesn’t have enough of it, and is literally slips right by him. He lives in a dream, surrounded by madness and symbols he can’t make out.

Time relates closely to death in this film, as the idea of lost time can surely relate to inevitable death. Sammy, Caden’s stalker and shadow and eventual lead actor, tells him something similar right before his suicide. “Say goodbye to Hazel for me,” he says, standing on the stop of the set of a building where Caden too once tried to jump. “And say it to yourself, too. None of us has much time.” Caden is a man obsessed with death and dying and sickness and disease. This much is clear from the opening of the film; his misreads a headline about Harold Pinter winning the Nobel Prize as Harold Pinter dying. (In a spot-on example of art imitating life, this is also a reference to Sky News accidentally reporting Pinter had died, before immediately correcting this to say he had in fact won the Nobel Prize.) He reads the obituaries, commenting on how many people are dying. He focuses on his stool, examining it closely for any example of blood. He sees several doctors, one after another, and constantly confuses his wording for what’s wrong with him. All of this is a lot to take in, but Kaufman made it clear right from the character’s name what’s happening. Caden Cotard is named for the Cotard delusion. Also known as Walking Corpse Syndrome, the Cotard delusion is a mental illness in which someone believes they are no longer alive or are dying. While I don’t think Caden has this in a literal sense, it’s certainly important to note that a man obsessed with his own personal health shortcomings shares a last name with a rare delusion. Death haunts Caden, ironically so much that everyone around him dies before him. Adele dies of lung cancer, after foreshadowing this by showing her coughing the first time she’s on screen. Olive dies of infection in her flower tattoos; Olive’s life wilts away just like the flowers on her arm. Hazel dies of what she agreed to die from decades earlier: her burning house takes her life the night after her and Caden finally begin a relationship. Sammy kills himself.  His father dies of cancer, his body evidently riddled with it. His mother falls subject to a gruesome murder following a home invasion. Everyone important in Caden’s life leaves or dies, or both. And so it’s important we see Caden as both someone dead and someone alive; he outlives everyone. When the play falls apart at the climax of the movie, Caden is directed by Ellen to drive around the city without a set location in mind. He drives around dead body after dead body, never commenting on the horrors that took place on set after decades of rehearsal. He sees an actress standing in the middle of an alley, the same actress we the audience saw moments ago in a dreamstate. Caden asks her where everyone has gone. “Dead, mostly. Some left.” This is true, both for Caden’s professional life, and for his personal shortcomings. The people he loved, they’re mostly dead. The others all left.

These themes resonate throughout the film in a way not a lot of films can make work. It’s largely due to the talent both onscreen and behind the camera; Kaufman is an excellent writing operating and, if not the top of his craft, certainly with ambition, and Philip Seymour Hoffman carries the load of this film with ease. But the film has another trick up its sleeve as well: postmodernism. Postmodern films reject the norm by replacing it with something new and outside of the established rules of filmmaking, and this film certainly does that. It’s the reason why so many of the clues and hints about what is going on in this film can be read at so many levels, depending on when and where you watch the film. For example, the film’s depiction of Caden Cotard can be read on an entirely new level, one in which Caden has committed suicide either prior to or during the events of the film. This idea is mind-twistingly complicated, but adds a level of emotional complexity and dreaminess to an already complex, dream-like film. No longer simply working on a textual and subtextual level, Synecdoche, New York falls into metatextual and meta-metatextual levels of thought.

The idea that Caden is dead throughout the film naturally follows the idea of death coursing through the veins of this film. Watching and rewatching this film, it becomes apparent there is a major turning point not long into the film, where things go from slightly off-kilter to hallucinatory. Following this idea, it is then when Caden dies and the film enters a sort of purgatory state. It’s a difficult idea to follow, sounding hokey and pretentious to some, but watching the film with this in mind is, at worst, an interesting idea, and at best, a brilliant conclusion and explanation, the period on the end of a long, classic novel. The pivotal scene in this film occurs following Adele’s decision to leave for Berlin with Olive by herself. Up until this point, it is clear that Caden’s life has been falling apart, and he isn’t happy. But it’s after his family leaves that he truly hits rock bottom. He sits in his basement and watches as the cartoon on his television tells the story of his death. He watches as animated-Caden falls from the sky into the ocean, only to be swallowed up and eaten. A song plays as he falls:

“There’s no real way of coping

When your parachute won’t open

You’re going down, you’re going down

You fell, then you died

Maybe someone cried

But not your one-time bride.”

There’s so much symbolism going on in this scene that it’s difficult to break down into one single important moment. Everything here matters. This scene follows Caden losing his family, losing everything he once thought valuable. The animation on the television shows him falling into the water and being courted by three mermaids, here representing Claire, Hazel, and Tammy, the faux-Hazel he sleeps with at his mother’s funeral. It is then when the voice tells him he was not cried for by his one-time bride, Adele, and it is after this scene when things begin to lose sense. He goes to see his therapist, who suddenly has a book to give him, written by herself, which seems to make no sense and follow no logic. At another, later meeting, his therapist tells him about a gruesome, dark novel called “Little Winky,” written by a four year old. She tells him the four year old committed suicide at five, leading Caden to ask why he killed himself. Madeline, his therapist, responds “I don’t know. Why did you?”

The idea of “Little Winky” is linked inherently with Caden in this film, as seen in a poster for the film adaptation seen on the street in once scene, with Caden standing in front of Little Winky. The book is described as the four year old author’s idea of what he would come out of his like in the future. The parallel here is imagining Caden’s life, and the film itself, as the same. Caden dreams of winning a MacArthur grant, of making a play about humanity and the human struggle. And yet, even in this idealized version of life, Caden cannot fulfill his life’s dreams. He is a failure from the start, his biggest accomplishment being receiving the grant that began all this in the first place.

Finally, the film references the time 7:45 multiple times. It begins the film, as I mentioned earlier, with the clock switching from 7:44 to 7:45. It arrives again at the end of the film, painted on a wall covered in graffiti. Millicent, Caden’s director, finally pulls it all together as she makes it clear what’s happening. She recites the following to Caden as he wanders around the vacated post-apocalyptic warehouse:

“...as you learn there was no one watching you, and there never was, you only think about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving at any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...

-gone.”

Once Caden reaches the word “gone,” he has his conversation with the actress from the dream. He rests his head on her shoulder, much like a child would with their parent and referencing his transformation into Ellen. He sits quietly, as the screen slowly fades to gray, mirroring the opening frames of the film, as he quietly says to himself for the final time, “I know what to do with this play now. I have an idea. I think-” before being cut off by Millicent, with one final word: “Die.” The gray drowns the film, and Caden’s hallucination ends. He is dead now, both in the real world and in purgatory. There is no more Caden Cotard.

Roger Ebert used Synecdoche, New York as an example of a film you had to see twice to get everything; there was just too much in the film to focus on in one viewing. I would go a step further: Synecdoche, New York is a film that you owe to yourself to see more than once. It is a life-affirming film; not a happy or joyous film, but one that focuses primarily on the human condition. It is, as critic Adam Johnston said in his analysis, “art-imitating-life-imitating-art-imitating-life and so on.” It is the work of one man, his magnum opus, his masterpiece and his biggest accomplishment. Much can be said about Synecdoche, New York; indeed, I haven’t even scratched the surface on how much is in this film, and I’d need another 7,500 words to do such a thing. Synecdoche is complex, emotional, confusing, draining, funny, heartbreaking, and above all, one of the most important films one will ever have the chance to watch.