Synecdoche, New York Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES PLOT SUMMARY
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
| Philip Seymour Hoffman | Caden Cotard |
| Catherine Keener | Adele Lack |
| Sadie Goldstein | Olive |
| Tom Noonan | Sammy Barnathan |
| Peter Friedman | Emergency Room Doctor |
| Charles Techman | Like Clockwork Patient |
| Josh Pais | Dr. Eisenberg |
| Daniel London | Tom |
| Robert Seay | David |
| Michelle Williams | Claire Keen |
| Stephen Adly Guirgis | Davis |
| Samantha Morton | Hazel |
| Hope Davis | Madeleine Gravis |
| Frank Girardeau | Plumber |
| Jennifer Jason Leigh | Maria |
| Charlie Kaufman |
7.60 out of 10 (7255 votes)
Visitor Reviews
This film...
posted on 25 Aug 2009I watch many films. In fact, I even can obsess over ratings, awards, acting capabilities, etc... The minute I started watching SNY, I never thought about anything. This tapped into every part of my mind, and as soon as Dianne's voice-over "Die..." hit the screen, I finally noticed I was crying my eyes out. I don't know why, I don't think I ever will. It was the most unexplainable experience of my life. I don't think this will ever happen again, nor have I ever experienced anything like this before... I do not know exactly what to think post-watching SNY.How can a film like this be made? I do not know exactly how to feel about it, but the strange thing is I have no desire to. For some odd reason, I feel like I understand life, death, vision, art... all of that just by allowing myself to become submerged into SNY.I do not plan on watching this film ever again, only because I fear the feeling it gave me now will be lost. This is just... more. That is how I can explain it. I'm sorry if I sound confusing, but it really is impossible to comment on this film.
Misery thrives on company.
posted on 23 Aug 2009Heavy on the negativism, self loathing, depression and reality crossing the line into mental fantasy. Caden Cotard(Philip Seymour Hoffman) is theatrical director, who finds his life turning to s#@t; too be exact his s#@t is turning colors. His wife(Catherine Keener)leaves him and takes their daughter to Germany. He also struggles with romantic relationships that he feels obligated to. Adding to his troubles, he discovers he is suffering a mysterious degenerative medical condition. He wants to leave his 'mark' on the world before he dies. His death is a dual obsession. Cotard's next project is turning his life into a monumental theater production. He builds a full-scale model of New York City inside a humongous warehouse and fills it with thousands of actors. His new piece is deeply personal and foreboding. Cotard unwittingly is creating his own monster that will swallow him whole.This movie is sad, dark and indulgent. Hoffman is excellent. Others in this cast of thousands: Michelle Williams, Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest.
Review
posted on 21 Aug 2009Brilliant. I don't even know where to start. Synecdoche is the craftiest, most sublime, and beautifully poignant movie possibly ever made. It leaves you with a very real sense of what it is to be human, at the same time stripping you of your fantasies and leaving you humbly alone to ponder on it all. The movie starts out in a mash of emotions and disconnectedness from any of the characters but yourself. Part of what is so brilliant about this movie is that you have no idea until almost the very end that you are literally a character in it and that only at that moment you have a clue as to what you've actually been watching. Right out of the gate you quite un-caringly find the main character Caden at the beginning of a confounding illness that threatens his life amidst his rather uninteresting and humiliating string of bad relationships with women. The man is definitively alone as he tries to make sense of his life. Writer, Director Charlie Kaufman works absolute magic as he twists what your watching into exactly what he wants you to feel. Just like Caden, at the beginning we don't care about anyone but our selves, you wonder why your even still watching it. When his first wife leaves for Germany with their daughter we feel the required amount of emotion to drag most of us through to it's end. The movie parallels not only life itself but your experiences watching it, Caden's life, the life of the film, the life of the piece Caden is ignorantly trying to create and your reactions to it. Kaufman plays with your attention, emotion, expectation, curiosity, and very humanity to bring you something akin to the biggest revelation of your life. What is all this human stuff about? What is it to grow old, lonely, degrading, having someone at it's end direct your life right to the point of death itself? It's not till the very end you grasp anything the movie is offering (of which I have left much out), yet when it happens it grips your very soul with a profoundness that has not been previously experienced as a result of any movie. Somehow depressing and consoling it stirs compassion and understanding for your fellow human in a depth not recognized before. F%$king brilliant.
The story of a man's last moments of life.
posted on 21 Aug 2009First off, Hoffman is brilliant. This is real acting; not requiring special F/X to make one a star, and even though for 99% of this movie I was going HUH?, every scene he was in was great. In an interview he basically tells us what the story is about, but you can tell that either he really quite does not know, or he is not supposed to tell. Keener, as usual, is superb as well. Like so few actors, she can say more with a facial expression than an entire page of dialogue. I had to read the blogs about the movie to try and figure out what was going on, and from what I can tell, not too many people could either. The issue that this is Ellen's story totally eludes me, since 1) she does not enter into the story until nearly the end of the picture, and 2) Hoffman's interview. As I was thinking of this movie, and boy will this movie get you thinking if you're the type to mull over a movie, and drifting off to sleep I think I came up with what this movie is about. It is about Caden, but it is the moment before he dies. Know that saying that when you die your life flashes before your eyes? How about when you die your future flashes before your eyes? But in this case some of Caden's past is there as well as that leads us into his final thoughts of what the future would be like. That's how we know he's an Uber hypochondriac, and that his marriage is not going well. This then explains all those weird scenes (the house always on fire, the play that takes 40 years to do, though never gets done, etc.). This also explains the time on the clock(s). Even if you never figure out what is going on, watching Hoffman is worth the time invested.
Nine and a Half
posted on 21 Aug 2009One of the most exasperating films I have ever seen, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK had me half wanting to leave the theater while the other half wanted to cheer for the sheer chutzpah of all concerned. Was it brilliant? Was it pretentious? Damned if I know. All I do know is that I stayed with it from beginning to end though many people walked out.In this film life reflects art, art reflects life and truth and illusion are blurred to a point of madness. Though there is no real relation between them, as I watched Kaufman's film, I kept thinking of Fellini's 8 1/2, so since the musical version of that film was called NINE,for me at least, this ends up being NINE 1/2. If you see it, I think you'll see what I mean.Hoffman is good as always, Michelle Williams was marvelous and Catherine Keener was, as always, superb.Don't go expecting an easy ride as you will be frustrated. However, should you go with friends who are film buffs and are ready to spend an hour or two over coffee or a drink battling about a film's merits or lack of same, this film is for you.
Heavy stuff
posted on 19 Aug 2009Great movie, surrealistic, absurd, some humor. How the theater piece and the real life float into each other at the end of the movie, is magnificently directed. The movie does make someone think about life for sure: we're all little humans with the same issues amongst other little humans... However at moments it looses its tension somewhat, and there are moments the movie gets somewhat repetitive. Cutting some of the scenes perhaps could have done a better job. The movie is an absolute must-see for the Woody Allen and David Lynch fans between us, be it that I miss a little extra humor, now it is rather depressing. Not really a nice entertaining piece to start a night out with your girl friend before going to the disco, prepare yourself for some heavy stuff...
Remember part of me is you
posted on 17 Aug 2009Is this a great movie? Sure. Would I want to see it again anytime soon? Hell no. First of all it's deeply confusing, even by the standards of a Charlie Kaufman movie. It's also exceedingly sad throughout, starting low and going lower, from blue to black to bleak. But most importantly, it's really very long. It feels like a one-hour movie with a two-hour ending, but maybe that's "because the end is built into the beginning." An out-of-luck playwright and a henpecked husband, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffmann) receives a prestigious scholarship, the kind Hoffmann's character in "The Savages" never got. Of course money changes everything, and of course it's for the worse. Endowed with the means to live his dream and produce the ultimate drama, Caden embarks on a journey from which he will not return. Working all departments, he is creating something so vast it will eventually swallow everything. Slowly, but irreversibly the production spins out of proportion and control. Scope and set are ever expanding. Casual comments turn into story lines and backdrops into locations. Onlookers and bystanders become part of the play, until everybody is in it and no-one is left to watch. The play becomes Caden's life, until his life is finally nothing but the play. It's the play to end all plays, the true Truman Show, a theater of the world as envisioned by Pedro Calderón himself. Quote Caden in his directorial persona: "You're in the scene, you're not just filming it." No doubt this is a masterpiece, but it's also Charlie Kaufman's darkest and most depressing movie to date.
Ceci N'est Pas Une Vie
posted on 17 Aug 2009Mind-boggling. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but what if a life is so given over to self-examination (and self-description) that the process of examination itself is what ends up being chiefly examined? This film, not "Adaptation", is the one in which Charlie Kaufman should have named his protagonist "Charlie Kaufman." It's a surrealist film about the surrealism inherent in trying to produce "realism" in Art.Caden wonders at the idea that his vast theater space might have been used to stage "King Lear", and that's an apt question (as well as a production of "Lear" I'd pay any amount to see), but he might just as well have wondered about staging "Hamlet" there. "Synecdoche, New York" is Kaufman's "Hamlet." Or perhaps it might best be considered "Bottom's Play", because it hath no bottom.
Impressive experiment by Kaufman, but one long death wake of depression of a movie.
posted on 13 Aug 2009Another unique Charlie Kaufman creation: NY theater director Hoffmann's life is withering as his health deteriorates, his wife leaves and moves abroad, taking their daughter along. Suddenly a grant allows him to slowly stage his own life as one enormous once-in-an-era play, using actors to play himself and his real-life surrounding fellow humans, in time-lapsing mode... or is that what's really happening? It's naturally no coincidence that Hoffmann's character is staging "Death of a salesman" at the beginning, since this IS Kaufman's own paraphrase of the same play, but with his completely unpredictable surreal touches that breaches and blurs the line between stage and screen. As an experiment itself, this is both fascinating and impressive with top acting. As a movie, unfortunately, it's one long, plodding death wake of depression. The dark laughs of the first half become scarcer and scarcer, leaving a most bleak, heavy and claustrophobic load for its audience to carry (and care less and less about) as its protagonist is lead into a fate that is hinted quite early on. It's sort of as if Woody Allen meets David Lynch and shakes hands with Robert Altman - on Valium... Might need and improve by repeated viewings, but for that to happen to me, will take a while! 4 out of 10 from Ozjeppe.
Fully realized journey of dread
posted on 11 Aug 2009Navel gazing. Self-indulgent. One is tempted to level both criticisms at Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. But the film doesn't end its gaze at the navel--it keeps burrowing in deeper, past the lint, through the dermis, and into the bowels of the writer/director. And faulting him for self-indulgence is redundant since the film is clearly a journey into the fevered psyche of Kaufman where we are asked to sort out the details. We are invited to Be John Malko--I mean Charlie Kaufman. We have been let off at the 7 1/2th floor and entered the Kaufman door.Kaufman, of course, scripted "Being John Malkovich" and with "Synecdoche" he revisits some of the same ontological and phenomenological territory. What is the self? How do I perceive myself, others, and the universe? "Malkovich," however, was buoyant, playful, and wacky and closed with a hopeful coda while "Synecdoche" makes a beeline straight for the pain. We will wallow in it with playwright Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Kaufman's doppleganger, and live through a lifetime of regret in two hours. The different tones of the two films has to do in part with directors. Spike Jonze brought a light, inventive touch while Kaufman is just as content to let images sit still for contemplation. Even the visual inventiveness, and this film is not in short supply, does not pop and delight. It causes dread and unease.But this is surely the point. The film begins in a relatively straightforward manner. Cotard is depressed and having difficulties in his marriage to Adele (Catherine Keener). He is anxious about his staging of "Death of a Salesman" and has begun a flirtation with the theater's ticket seller (Samantha Morton). The film appears to be a normal domestic drama, but as the minutes pass we know something is slightly off. By the time we visit the house that's always on fire, the film has become completely unmoored from reality as we know it and we have to begun to experience the director's existential dread right alongside of him.The film is endlessly creative but too self-involved to stir most audiences. As with Woody Allen, Kaufman's films appear to be therapy where he works out his issues and neuroses on screen. It has been said that you are everyone in your dreams and Kaufman teases this out in his films to the point where you are also everyone in your waking life and a god as well. It's a solipsistic existence that's finally intensely lonely. The commercial prospects for this were clearly limited. Kaufman breaks free of typical narrative convention and lets his ideas take the lead."Synecdoche" is filled with ideas and strong female performers. Catherine Keener, Dianne Weist, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, and Michelle Williams all give fascinating performances. It's exciting to see so many accomplished actresses in challenging roles all in one film. The film follows no predictable pattern and continually surprises. It's a fully realized depiction of dread and longing, but not completely convincing in its convictions.
We can dissect all we want, but in the end, it is a pleasure to have an artist like Kaufman in our generation.
posted on 11 Aug 2009It is only fitting that screenwriter Charlie Kaufman would step behind the camera for his directorial debut for this, which seems even more personal than "Adaptation". Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, a New York playwright who is known for his ambitious set-dressing technique. From the start of the film, it is obvious that Caden is quite obsessive compulsive when it comes to his work and his life. He begins to obsess about his health after a slight head injury.After Caden's production of "Death Of a Salesmen", a version where he chose young actors to portray the characters of old age and is congratulated on this choice (another Kaufman allusion to his own work in this very film), he is offered a genius grant. He vows to make his most personal work ever. By this time, his wife and his four-year old girl have taken a "vacation" in Germany. Quickly, we learn that as Caden is constantly going to doctors appointments and working on his play which begins to outright reflect reality, that it has been a year since his wife and child have left for Germany. Caden has lost all sense of time. Quick jumps take us only forward in time, and Caden does not seem to understand why.I would prefer at this point to not give too much of the plot details away, because this first act is very typical and humorous Charlie Kaufman writing. He slips in on the audience and gives them a reason to stay, to watch the film develop. Of course, he puts his own subtle ( and not so subtle) pieces of the plot in this first act. But for Kaufman's least accessible work, he has his plot down, he has his points, he has his humor, he has the knack for directing his actors.Everything comes together in a film such as this. As Caden begins to build a replica of his entire life within a warehouse in New York for his play, we see an amazing set come to life with a cast and crew who are obviously dedicated and who believe in the work of Kaufman. Visually, the film is beautiful, but not in the same way as "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind". It is just as, if not more surreal, than any of his previous work. It explores human relationships, the human mind, what life may mean to some people, it plays with gender roles, it's a play within a play within a film within a script within a life within a performance that is Philip Seymour Hoffman who is playing a man who is a reflection of the mind of Charlie Kaufman - and for what it is worth, it doesn't come off as a pretentious work whatsoever.If anything, Kaufman explores the neurosis of the human mind that he may know better than anyone. Having devoted this part of his life simply to writing, it has to be hard not to know your own brain inside out but to develop a parallel theory of paranoia to everything you are sure of in your mind. A human who is neurotic knows they are, unlike many humans who are paranoid schizophrenic who can be oblivious to the fact that they are paranoid, a neurotic human is aware of all times and is battling themselves in every moment of their life. Paranoia is a huge part of this film, but it is not the only aspect of it.The film possesses a jet-black humor to it. All of the jokes are truly funny. It is darker than any of the humor in all of Kaufman's other work, but it works so much better. The entire film works so much better. It is as if Kaufman knew that if he directed this project he could do it like he had visioned all of his other work on screen - but on the other hand, no one would expect this man to have so much confidence in himself, so I can see him doubting himself every second of making this movie. Once again, it is that constant battle. I think Kaufman knew he could make it the way he would want to see it, and that was good by his mind, but then, "Will other people hate it? No one thinks like I do, I'm just crazy." Even with that, we can see this film and we can over analyze it if we want and wonder why the artist put this in that or that in there and this person said that line or what does this mean. In the end, we can walk up to Kaufman and ask him, but I do not think he is that kind of artist. His work is open for interpretation. I think that how we reflect on this film, reflects on who we are. Our past experiences make us who we are today, and after we watch a film like this, a work of art, how we feel is a reflection of ourselves. Every response to this review is a reflection of our own personality, our human condition. Every event that has happened to us in the past has conditioned us to some degree to make us who we are today. Think about what you are about to say or do, and then think about who you are and what made you that.There is no need to go into and dissect every piece and every page in and every scene in Kaufman's work. It is a masterpiece to be enjoyed over and over. Every time we watch it in the future, we do not need to have a round table to wonder what everything means. Kaufman is reaching out and trying to convey his mind, his emotions, he is not trying to change his viewers. He is trying to relate, like everyone else.
Indescribable like a dream.
posted on 07 Aug 2009Synecdoche New York - Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) thinks of
nothing but illness and death. He's a theater director who makes a life
sized version of New York and directs a play that consumes his life to.
He is determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty,
something into which he can pour his whole self, and so he gathers an
ensemble cast into an impossibly huge warehouse in Manhattan's theater
district. There are heavy themes of life, death, illness and illusion
and the blend between fantasy and reality. And the timeline condenses
and years go by in blinks, you'll find your head spinning. It is
directed and written by the king of impossible to describe films,
Charlie Kaufman.
The performances are top notch. Hoffman is in fine form as he gives the
literal performance of a lifetime. Cathrine Keener plays his
unsympathetic first wife. Samantha Morton plays his romantic interest.
All of the performances are stellar. I think my favorite parts are when
the "real" people begin to fall for the actor versions of their other
halves. It's all so ludicrous and yet so true. Kaufman really does have
a grasp of the hidden "truth" within illusion. He's just brilliant. I
loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind more than this but that
film was hopelessly romantic and more suited to yours truly.
I get the feeling that I'd need to see this film three or four times
through to get an accurate feel for it. Synecdoche has a quality that
is just indescribable. I was asked by other viewers afterwards what it
was about and I was lost for words. Talking about it is like describing
a painting. You just have to see it. It's like judging a man's life.
The closest thing I can think of that it comes close to is The Truman
Show. I could spend so long describing how I can't describe it. I
didn't strongly like or dislike this film. That's not the point. The
point of Synecdoche is to get one to think, and it succeeds in spades.
It's not emotionally gripping but surprisingly unsentimental. It deals
with the grimmest most widely shared problem (death) yet with wit and
reverence. Synecdoche combines the lack of glamour of reality with
dream-like moments and avant-garde qualities. In fact that's the best
descriptor I can give Synecdoche, it's a dream. It has an engaging
narrative, keeps things going, raises issues, but then you wake up and
go "What was that?" Quite unforgettable but hardly for everyone,
Synecdoche, New York gets an A-
Epic Kaufman
posted on 01 Aug 2009This movie actually reminded me of the many Virginia Woolf books I read for a class a few years ago: a lot of beautiful and carefully considered words are said about life, but they end up getting second in line to the much more obsessive nature of the work and it's more interesting structure. I am sure, "Synecdoche, New York" has a lot to say, but I'm not totally sure what it is and find that it's not nearly as important to me as the process. I'm a fan of Charlie Kaufman's style of writing, and years and years of watching experimental, self-reflective, surreal, and wonky mind-twisting works have taught me to take these things at much more face value than others. The issue here is not trying to figure out what is going on, but letting it go where it's going to and being patient with it. Going into this movie, the real thing I was interested in seeing is whether this movie would have an audience of one or an audience of two: would only Charlie Kaufman like this movie, or could I like it too? Many people say that this movie really needed an editor to cut it down, but I'd hate to be the editor asked to do that. "Well maybe we could get rid of this... wait a minute, was that important? Or maybe... no... well... wait, what about this? Oh wait..." No, the editing isn't the issue, the issue is that this movie is a pretty miserable experience, and I don't mean that in a bad way because I'm pretty sure misery was what Kaufman was aiming for. This movie is, frankly, epic, and even more trapped inside the head than his other works. It follows the life of a man, Caden, from mid-aged crisis through death in old age, and structures it around all of the people in his life that slowly die or fade away as he gets increasingly removed from reality, trading in his hypochondria for a never-ending play set within a world within a world that endlessly seeks to recreate and re-interpret his feelings of loss and loneliness. However, it is important to note that it is also meant to be funny. You won't laugh aloud, but this movie is not Charlie Kaufman--it's more like a satire of the danger Kaufman sees in what would happen if his wish to invert the famous "All the world's a stage" quote were to be fulfilled. If what was on screen truly represented Kaufman's own reality, this movie wouldn't exist; and the only times the movie mentions "truth" is once the characters get trapped in a warehouse decidedly removed from the real world.What really lends this movie its cadence (please excuse the pun) is the really harsh and piercing way it abuses time. Caden slowly ages throughout the entire movie, a process turned tantalizing with the knowledge that the movie will end once he finally dies (and anyone who considers this a spoiler will understand how it's not within five minutes after the movie starts). And forced to wait for him to die, the audience gets to deal with the shocks as the people Caden love die before him, revealing a general (and understandable) fear not only of dying but of dying as the last one left alive. As a result, time jumps in sudden and unexpected ways, and Caden loses complete track of it (despite all of the close-ups of images of clocks throughout the movie). His wife leaves him for a month and suddenly has been gone for a year. His daughter grows to maturity before he's fully aware that she's gone. The Play goes 17 years and counting without ever letting out or gaining an audience. And through it all, Caden finds himself still stuck in the two-hour timespan of the movie itself, until he loses his role as director of millions and becomes the actor of one.And it drags. There's no denying that. Unfortunately, I can't really imagine the movie working any other way, so those who actually see it have to be patient with it. There's a lot of singular brilliant moments in the malaise, but it's a murky movie and not very willing to let anyone up for air. The best thing about, though, is that Phillip Seymour Hoffman takes what is the most demanding role ever asked for on film and manages to hold it together. The intensity of the acting and the hoops that man has to jump through to work through all the things the character work through pretty much demand that you watch it all the way through. Too bad very few people are going to end up seeing this one; it's very demanding of the audience as well, and even as a Kaufman film presents a whole new mode of film-making.In the end, this movie made me reconsider my impression of who Charlie Kaufman is as a person. I went into the movie with the assumption that it was about him the way "Adaptation." was about him, but whereas it was in some regards, in other ways its impossible that this movie could really represent him. Instead, Caden is, in fact, a post-modern Willy Loman, and one that needs a car-crash to end his suffering but never really gets it. And if your the type of viewer that needs a car-crash to keep a movie interesting, there's not a chance in Hell that you'll make it through this one.--PolarisDiB
A powerful blow to one's mind, heart and soul.
posted on 30 Jul 2009As all Kaufman works this one is also a strange one and not intended to be liked by everyone. All I can say is it struck me and pierced my soul. In the end I felt as if my heart broke. A really powerful, touching and beautiful story. Love, death, relationships, eternity, meaning of live, parenthood, imagination, art - so many topics! And Charlie somehow managed to cover them all really well. Maybe because they are the same thing after all? This movie may be a dangerous one to someone who's feelings are exposed at the moment. It really makes you think about the insignificance of human existence. If you feel depressed don't watch it. A masterpiece.
worst movie of all time
posted on 28 Jul 2009Puerile, nihilistic, self-indulgent tripe...by the time the torture of this POS was over, I couldn't believe I'd paid for it.Kept waiting for some pay-off, any sliver of insight or meaning...none, just more 2-clever by 1/2 idiocy, the summa of which is the title, trust me, the title is more meaningful than the entirety of the whole "film".But wait, there's more! We get to see feces in a toilet, repeatedly, we get to see buxom women throw themselves at a pathetic nebish who cries when women want him...why do they want him? Who knows, it's never explained.Then there's the ooh-so-deep, bong hits in the dorm vision of how everyone is a player on the stage, and we're all just actors. "All the world's a stage, etc." Shakespeare said it in one line, this movie takes 2+ hours to labor over the idea and add nothing.Wow, totally craptastic!
Veering close to the end.
posted on 26 Jul 2009Multiple selves and multiple lives mirrored in the complexity of and constructed by an intense, suffocating interiority of an alternative but somehow parallel world that decays on the outside as our hero decays on the inside. It falls apart and is reconstructed as does he. He constructs new selves at a pace that mirrors ageing and life. It is painful, gentle, prodding and probing. The 'out of control' selves who change and challenge his perception of self, who reveal his inner deceptions and lay them in an outer but protected domain are interesting. The fact that his public do not see but we do is equally interesting as a concept but no more. It challenges and chases your thoughts but sometimes it chases them to the bar, the fridge or the exit. It is too damn long and tortured. 20 minutes needed editing out. The metaphor and in the end, the ultimate synecdoche did not need such over blowing to waft past effectively. Take a cushion, you will need it..
The Living Theater Of Charlie Kaufman
posted on 20 Jul 2009It was bound to happen. The brilliant writer of "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" made his directorial debut. Interesting, yes, without question, but self conscious to the point of distraction. Kaufman's mind with all its implications is a the center of this dream colored by illness and paranoia. Strange echoes of Julian Beck and Luis Bunuel made the experience rather gripping but I must confess I felt the need to run home and take a long shower after the film and read something funny, I selected Alan Bennet's "Uncommon Reader" It worked. I may even go again to see this Charlie Kaufman film with its unpronounceable title. I guess that even that is on purpose, so we all can refer to it as Charlie Kaufman's movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, as usual. This time I also felt his body odor. Yuck! I remember Hoffman's dirty fingernails even when he was playing Truman Capote so I presume that is the actor's trait and not the character's, although, here, the filth that he exudes matches perfectly his story. Catherine Keener and Emily Watson are also superb but Samantha Morton, once again, got me completely. I will advise you to see it, at your own risk.
not THAT good
posted on 18 Jul 2009Here is Kaufman's first directing effort, and, not surprisingly, a fall-short effort it is. I can understand that some of the painful slowness of the film might have been for purpose, but it just manifested as a big turnoff for me. I ended up too spaced out to take much of anything from this.The state of This is also a very typical first-director's-work-on-their-own-script, since a lot of scenes could have been cut out. And the whole Ouroboros theme is very typical of Kaufman. Brings me back to Adaptation. There is also scant technique, without much separating the parts of the story save Hoffman's makeup.I will say that what message there was, it was good. Very bold meditation on how we live our lives, about the things that we miss because we're too busy focused on a search for meaning.Overall, I think this film is good, but could have been great if left up to a more experienced director. Oh yeah, and I still don't get why Hazel's house is eternally on fire.
no conventional score applies to Synecdoche, New York
posted on 16 Jul 2009It is very difficult to conceive of a movie much more complex than synecdoche. Yet, oddly, I have no desire to see it again just so that I might resolve something. Not because I disliked it, but because so many scenes were indelibly imprinted within my mind such that I "get it". That is, I "get it" as much as can be expected. My first impression as the movie started was that "dialogue" was the entertainment. Actually, for this reason (i.e., dialogue), I would see this movie again. However, because the dialogue heightened my awareness of the same, it became easily perceptible when dialogue began to yield its place to various "prop devices" as the centerpiece of entertainment. I'm not necessarily using the phrase "prop devices" as disapproval because we sometimes present ourselves as silly when we, for example, indicate that such and such should not exist or should be replaced by such and such. In many cases, we would have then simply created "another movie". In this case, maybe we should make our own movie. That's when some of us would realize just how difficult it is to actually make one of these things. Some of the devices (literary or cinematographic) used by Kaufman were stunning or spectacular! For example, the "voice" of Adele's (Cotard's wife played by Catherine Keener) miniature paintings, and the paintings themselves, were used to great effect. The creation of a "New York within New York" presents very interesting and creative cinematography. The work (make-up, costume, and lighting) performed to create the illusion of aging characters is also very well done. And while the seemingly non-stop, nested twists and turns might make one dizzy, it is just this unexpected variety that provided a journey instead of just another movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to deliver. I found his performance to be communicative and almost accessible to the touch, as one is almost unaware that he is acting. This gives us the feeling that we know him. We then become comfortable with him, and finally empathetic.This movie comes at you in layers of interwoven humanness. Every message invited the audience to think about themselves, their families, their lives, their legacy, their meaning, and their relationships. Caden Cotard (main character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was chronically, and strangely ill. There was a scene where Cotard, after receiving permission from his wife Adele, urinated in a sink while his wife and young daughter were both present in the room (present, but not watching). His urine appeared to be mostly blood yet he offered no reaction at all and simply carried on as if the absurd had become the expected. His sickness seemed to symbolize the loneliness that is concomitant with the very individuality necessary in order to qualify as an autonomous human being. If we die alone, are we in fact alone? Of course, this movie is about much more than that. No doubt, most of the criticism of this movie will be that it is far too ambitious. But what do we want? Do we want movies that only fit within our conventional range of pace, dialogue, boundaries, and cinematography? It seems that conventional movies will continue to appear with great frequency so, they will be readily available, but movies like Synecdoche are rare. Nevertheless, there were quite a few things that I did not like. While Phillip Seymour Hoffman very convincingly depicted the kind of leg tremors that might be caused by neuropathy, I found his enactment of a seizure to be so unconvincing that I actually laughed aloud. Interestingly enough, there was a gentleman one row up and about 10 seats to my right, who clearly did not like my idea of "funny". – Although one got the strong impression that the gentleman expected everyone within 200 feet of him to "synchronize" with his idea of good comedic timing, as he outscored us all with his use of laughter aloud -- And that is one of the effects of the complexity of this film; that is, though this film might be easily regarded as "despairing", there were many funny moments where laughter erupted even while surrounded by loss and brokenness; just like real life. Sometimes, though, brilliance might not be brilliance; sometimes it just might be simple depravity disguised as something intellectual and modern. For example, while I love Tom Noonan's work in most everything he does, I did not like Kaufman's wording of his character's pitch to play Cotard. – Obviously, this "play" is not a real play, but a montage of a construct that represents the mind, fears, and philosophies of Cotard. While I would prefer dialogue that allows for the existence of things like intellectualism, the intelligentsia, modernity, and the avant-garde without requirement for homosexual references, don't mistake my preference for a suggestion that anything should be changed in this movie. Since Cotard was not homosexual, parts of the movie seem to suggest it par for the course that all men somehow contend with homosexuality. This is not true. This is the movie that Charlie Kaufman wanted to make. No one can say that it should be anything other than what it is. I doubt that any of us will agree on much regarding this movie, as we don't agree on much regarding life.
The most dangerous film of the year
posted on 27 Aug 2009This is a film about Caden Cotard. Caden has mounting health problems and serious relationship problems. Caden gets a letter to enable the funds to craft as big a production as they want. Caden then finds a massive warehouse and, with the group of people who are involved, they build a full-scale model of New York. Then, inside that model, they build the same warehouse in order to build a model of New York inside that. Then inside the second model they build the warehouse that the original model is located in and then build a model of New York inside of that one and so-on and so-on. Basically, it's like one of those Russian dolls where you keep taking the top off and it gets smaller and smaller but there still exists another inside of the one that is much bigger. Or, if you put a mirror in front of another mirror to create an everlasting eternity of infinite mirrors inside mirrors that continuously get smaller and smaller and smaller but continue to exist despite the ones further down being invincible to the naked eye. Anyway, the film's concepts are grounded on the basis of those sorts of circumstances and situations. However, this is all part of Caden's directorial vision of a stage-play that keeps growing larger and larger but will likely never be fully realized. This process will go on for 40 years, during which many many people will die, either form old age or from suicide or from some other means. This film has been growing more and more in my mind each passing day. I only saw it a few days ago, but it's already beginning to affect my life. The problem I have is trying to figure out whether or not it is affecting me in a good way or a bad way. This is a film that has somehow affected my subconscious train of thought in some weird way. It has struck a cord. It has pinched a nerve. In some weird way, this film makes more sense than any other film ever made. Watching this film was like watching the worst nightmare anyone could ever have. There is something profoundly basic about this film. There are moments of incredible sadness, brilliant humor, and genuine horror, and yet these moments will be completely different to all who watch it. Some will laugh hard at scenes that many other people find incredibly heart-wrenching. This film goes from one scene to another with layer upon layer of genuine seriousness inside of ideas that, in theory, are quite satirical. At the base of all of this is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden. Caden takes more physical and emotional abuse than any normal human being could ever take. However, the characters who play Caden and the many women that surround Caden are played by separate actors inside of the stage-play and take on many different character choices and arcs, but as the real life people die, it becomes clear that the structure of the idea surrounding the character of Caden, in the play, will not be superficially sound and solid enough for it to work on a genuine level. Caden wants to create something real, but as a result the self-discovery process becomes an unexpectedly rocky road. I know that the film is saying that death is scary, but to get deeper would require more than one viewing. I need to see this movie again. I'm dying to. I'm going to have to own it when it comes out because I feel that this film could teach me something about myself that I don't yet know. I felt like this film may have partly been about me, and I think that Charlie Kaufman, the writer and director of Synecdoche, New York may be a mad genius and may have helped me rediscover my mad genius through this film alone.