I wouldn't go so far as to call Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" one of the greatest movies of its decade, but its intellectual profundity makes it one of the most impressive pieces of work. This story of a theater director whose life is unraveling has so many layers that it's hard to describe. An obvious point is that the movie goes to great lengths to blur fiction and reality, as the protagonist's play begins to look more and more like real life.
An important point is that time progresses throughout the movie without the characters stating it, or background objects showing it. The protagonist is shown aging, as is his daughter, while he expands his model city. Interestingly, the warehouse is impossibly large, while his ex-wife's art gets smaller over the course of the movie.
Key to the movie is Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance. He plays Caden as a man at the end of his emotional rope, just like Willy Loman (whom Caden plays early on). It's too bad that Hoffman isn't with us anymore. I have no doubt that he would still be playing great roles were he alive today.
Plenty of outstanding support comes from the rest of the cast. Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Dianne Wiest, and the rest of them show themselves to be some of the finest performers of our era.
Basically, any film buff owes it to himself/herself to see this movie.
Synecdoche, New York
2008
Action / Comedy / Drama / Romance
Synecdoche, New York
2008
Action / Comedy / Drama / Romance
69% - Critics
71% - Audience
7.5Keywords: new york citywritermagic realismman woman relationshiptheater director
Plot summary
Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mock-up of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria. He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counselling him. His second daughter, Ariel, is disabled. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.
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hyperreality affects the mind, the spirit, and the body
highly ambitious
Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is physically falling apart. He is working on the play Death of a Salesman with his leading lady Claire Keen (Michelle Williams). His wife Adele Lack (Catherine Keener) goes on a trip with their daughter Olive. Box office girl Hazel (Samantha Morton) keeps flirting with him. He gets a grant and rents out a giant space. He starts building a play where the cast does everyday things. The world inside the giant space starts becoming more real than the real world. Caden and Claire become parents with a girl as reality and fiction become indistinguishable.
This is a highly ambitious movie coming from the outsider mind of Charlie Kaufman. The start is pretty slow especially with a depressed Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie turns very loopy, imaginative and utterly original. This is a movie trying to be life itself. It loses some of its cohesiveness as it tries to be too much. At times, I'm both resigned to not being able to grab hold of the story and interested to see more loopy ideas. I give Kaufman full marks for being unrestrained in his vision but this may need a bit more to make it an accessible watch.
Kaufman sinks his boat
Synecdoche, New York is written by Charlie Kaufman and is also his directorial debut. Its a topsy turvy mess of a film that will leave you baffled and by the end bored.
Despite some good performances and set design its unfathomable. The film starts off straightforward enough as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christine Keener are husband and wife living in an apartment with a young daughter. Hoffman has issues with his health, so does his daughter and it seems the marriage may not be happy as it seems. If you are keen eyed you will notice the newspaper date jumps about in time. A clue that not everything is all it seems, not unusual in a film written by Kaufman.
As the film progresses and Keener leaves Hoffman the film gets more confusing and surreal. Hoffman spurns the romantic attention of Samantha Morton and it seems is oblivious to the sexual attraction of his therapist which later in the film is revealed as his latent homosexuality.
This is before we get to his staging of his play which drags on for years and become more self indulgent and surreal.
I do not mind a trippy film if there was some reward. The film instead just fights its audience. Kaufman the writer needed someone else to direct and rein it in a little and bring some focus.