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SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Tilda Swinton, Hope Davis, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Robin Weigert and Tom Noonan

Directed by: Charlie Kaufman

R for language and some sexual content/nudity

By John Delia

This may not come as a surprise to you who have seen Synecdoche, New York, but the film is amazingly acted, superbly filmed, and totally off the wall. Mainstream filmgoers will be hard pressed to sit through the convoluted plot that only a true indie lover or film student could avail.
Theater director Caden Cotard (Hoffman) is mounting a new play. His life catering to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, New York is looking bleak. His wife Adele (Keener) has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein) with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis (Davis), is better at plugging her best seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Morton) has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one.
Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside. However, as the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria (Leigh). His lingering attachments to both Adele and Hazel are causing him to helplessly drive his new marriage to actress Claire (Williams) into the ground. Sammy (Noonan) and Tammy (Watson), the actors hired to play Caden and Hazel, are making it difficult for the real Caden to revive his relationship with the real Hazel. The textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the worlds of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality.
The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems (Wiest), a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.
The reason I have given you the full synopsis of the film is that if you go to see it, you will be able to follow the reasoning behind the whole thing. The somewhat complicated film did not amuse me, as it tended to be very wordy and unashamedly boring. After some time I found myself saying, ‘so what’s the point? ’.
The acting however, is superb and if that’s what you are looking for, then this is your cup of tea. Hoffman gives his best performance as the delusional director who just can’t get a grip on his mind numbing life. The actor shows how great he is even though the role in the long-winded script was probably not the best choice of his great career. Others giving their best support include Davis, who came out of hiding to give a great performance as Hoffman’s therapist in the film, Leigh as his wife’s sarcastic best friend and Morton who portrays the love interest he cannot seem to hold onto.
The film contains language and some sexual content with nudity, so even though the children you have to lug along will probably fall asleep within the first half hour, please be forewarned.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Film buffs and students may find the film interesting and enjoyable, but don’t count on it too much. (1.5 of 5 stars)