/Synecdoche, New York (2008).jpg)
/Synecdoche, New York (2008)2.jpg)
/Synecdoche, New York (2008)3.jpg)
/Synecdoche, New York (2008)4.jpg)
Synecdoche, New York
- Director: Charlie Kaufman
- Writer: Charlie Kaufman
- Producer: Ray Angelic; Anthony Bregman
CGiii Comment
...and the jury is definitely out on this one...Oscar-winning writer Kaufman, directs his first feature and it truly is hard work.
Possibly too hard for most...film imitating art imitating life - on and on.
Kaufman's previous work is accessible simply because of the off-the-cuff eccentric humour - this has none of that appealing (and required) eccentricity.
This is just an exceedingly well-acted hardship - hard labour, that will turn many off and away.
It is huge in its scope - that may be its problem.
It is ambitious, it is art and it is difficult.
And...Hoffman is quite remarkable.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
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.
Cast & Characters
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard;
Catherine Keener as Adele Lack;
Sadie Goldstein as Olive;
Tom Noonan as Sammy Barnathan;
Peter Friedman as Emergency Room Doctor;
Charles Techman as Like Clockwork Patient;
Josh Pais as Dr. Eisenberg;
Daniel London as Tom;
Robert Seay as David;
Michelle Williams as Claire Keen;
Stephen Adly Guirgis as Davis;
Samantha Morton as Hazel;
Hope Davis as Madeleine Gravis;
Frank Girardeau as Plumber;
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Maria