Film Reviews

Synecdoche, New York

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman
• Details: US / 124mins (TBC).

We haven't had a Charlie Kaufman film in five years. Sure, we've had Science of Sleep and Stranger Than Fiction to keep us company, but even though they were funny, smart, wacky and downright weird in their own right, nobody does Charlie Kaufman better than Charlie Kaufman. With Synecdoche, New York, not only do we get Charlie Kaufman directing for the first time, we get a darker, profound and impenetrable Charlie Kaufman, who hops back and forth between mainstream and art house - sometimes even in the same scene.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the perpetually ill Caden Cotard, a brilliant theatre director who has just being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, dubbed the 'genius grant'. Securing a massive disused warehouse in New York, Cotard plans to stage an ongoing play of 'brutal honesty' that depicts his own life and the people who are apart of it. Setting about casting doubles for the women he's known and loved (Emily Watson doubles for Morton, who also has a role on set), Cotard settles on Sammy (Noonan) to play himself, a method 'actor' who has been following Cotard for 20 years to ready himself for the role. As Cotard's life falls apart and new experiences garner fresh knowledge of himself, the play constantly shifts and changes.
No synopsis would ever do Synecdoche, New York any justice and any attempt to nail down what the film is about would be, like Caden's grand opus - and Kaufman's attempt to film it - folly. Only Kaufman knows what is going on. That said, there's never a dull moment here. The typical Kaufman themes of loneliness, failure, legacy, fear and the desire to be someone else are present and correct but the message here is murky. Or that Kaufman's attempts to convey is message are murky. Stepping behind the camera for the first time, Kaufman struggles to keep all his ideas - of which there are many - afloat and maybe he should have left the directing to Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) or Michel Gondry (Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), two directors who are adept at realising visually what is on Kaufman's script pages. There's no imagination to his directing style; all the style here is in the idea. What an idea, though.
And what performances. Hoffman, as expected, is brilliant again but Morton, as Caden's would-be lover and Michelle Williams, as his second wife, chip in with dependable and often hilarious turns. Behind them the small roles of Noonan, Keener, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Diane Weist are just as memorable. A 'synecdoche', by the way, is a figure of speech when a part is used to describe the whole, like calling someone an a**hole. This film (the part) is Kaufman's attempt to explain life (the whole) and even Kaufman knows that that is impossible. No harm in giving it a go, though. Synecdoche, New York is a film that will reveal more of itself with each repeated viewing, and this demands to be seen more than once.

Review by Gavin Burke