Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman’s (writer of Eternal Sunshine.., and Being John Malkovich) directorial debut is as anyone familiar with his written output might expect…just a whole lot more so!
Theatre director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is to mount a new play. Unfortunately life around him seems to be collapsing – his wife leaves him to pursue her painting career in Berlin, taking their young daughter with her, and he is stricken with a series of increasingly severe illnesses.
Reflecting on the transient nature of his life, Cotard gathers an ensemble cast in a warehouse in New York City, and sets about trying to create a work of ‘brutal honesty’. The increasingly farcical scale, ambition and complications of the theatre production parallel the film’s break down of linear narrative and its fall further into a surreal nightmare where fiction and reality blur beyond distinction.
Synecdoche, New York is a wildly ambitious, self-indulgent, confounding and quite frequently simply baffling film. With wonderful performances, particularly from British actress Samantha Morton, it is an incredible work – a thoroughly enjoyable ramble through the brain of a neurotic writer. Possibly the most divisive film of the year, it fervently defies description and as such, just has to be seen.