SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008)

CAST: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Michelle Williams, Diane Wiest, Hope Davis, Josh Pais, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jerry Adler, Lynn Cohen

Written & Directed By: Charlie Kaufman
Cinematography By: Fredrick Elmes
Editor: Robert Frazen
Production Design: Mark Friedberg
Art Direction: Adam Stockhausen
Original Score By: Jon Brion

I’m not going to lie this is not a film for everyone it is a very strange film and I consider myself smart and I didn’t even understand the film completely is film has a abstract and surreal quality. It’s almost like watching a daid lynch film but not as dark and scary

This film started off as a collaboration project by Charlie Kaufman and Director Spike Jonze to make a horror film while Charlie Kaufman came up with the idea of the horror of life and the absence of family and the degenerative state of the body. Spike Jonze went off to make the movie “Where The Wild Things Are” while Charlie kept on trying to finish this project. I have to say for a first time director he is very impressive. Not over abundance on style or trying to cram too much into the film to tell a story. Charlie Kaufman had intended “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” To be his directorial debut but decided better to let Michel Gondry do it as it was a more Visual story that involved emotional truth and nakedness. This film has amazing visuals but is more invested in the emotions and situations the characters find themselves in.

As usual the film has a depressing protagonist expertly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his performances I actually like a lot who is a playwright who discovers he is slowly dieing whose wife leaves him with there daughter for Berlin with her strange friend he wins a grant and decides to make a theater production of his life it is housed in a warehouse and everyday he directs actors playing himself and the people in his life as well as his neighbors and the actors playing all the characters and each day he adds to it and adds anyone he comes into contact with over the years he decides to try and find his daughter and is kept from her at every turn until near the end where the reunion doesn’t go the way he planned. As a sidenote I have to say that Jennifer Jason leigh plays the most evil character I have ever seen on the screen even worse then action movie villains. The film is and has plenty of absurdism his wife is a miniature painter. His wife’s back tattoo that he strangely never noticed. The woman who lives in a house that is always on fire and smoking. The same woman in life playing her role in the play within the play within the play.

If that sounds confusing that is only the start of it. The film is a great meditation on life and all it’s trappings it is a depressing tale mixed with humor. The tone of the film is a Woody Allen movie that he wishes he could make with plenty of offbeat and sometimes out of place humor. Mixed with some of the most depressing scenes ever committed to film but this was strangely a film I could identify with. It doesn’t fit easily into any mold even though you could characterize it in many. It’s a heartbreaking film with a magnificent score. Great art direction and tremendous acting. This is a film that as a chameleon I think will get more appreciated over the years, it’s like a film that feels like you are reading a book learning more and more about fate and life. Like reading a classic book that you don’t fully understand but know there is something special about it and if you could figure it out you would like it more but frustrates you the more and more it goes on.

Another interesting tidbit of the film is the casting of emily watson and samantha morton two actresses who resemble each other smaantha morton who in real life is the younger one out of the two of them plays the older character that emily watson is playing but in the film she is younger then her. i just thought that was interesting and the type of absurdism the film finds itself in constantly.

The Film feels autobiographical though may not be as Charlie Kaufman is infamously reclusie or this may all be a comedy as this is just his type of humor.

I would definitely recommend this film but warn you. It’s very arty and independent I stopped trying to figure it out a half hour into it. But if you give it a chance the film starts to grow on you and after it is over the more you think about it the more you find yourself likeing and impressed with it