Synedoche: New York PDF Print E-mail
Written by Colin Fraser   
Wednesday, 13 May 2009 06:55
SYNECDOCHE: NEW YORK (M)

Starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton

Directed by Charlie Kaufman

4 stars

Life folds in on itself in Charlie Kaufman’s most surreal and perhaps saddest drama to date.

It’s no feel-good movie and you’d expect little else when the master of the mindfuck begins musing on death.

Steeped in magical realism, Synecdoche: New York is a film that swings and shifts with such momentum it’s often hard to say where you are, or where you’re heading. Making any sense of it is part of the challenge: many will revel in the synecdoche of the event, just as many will ask for their money back.

When theatre director Caden Cotard becomes preoccupied by his own mortality, he elects to stage ‘a work of genius’. But as external events are drawn into the play, it reshapes life, which reshapes the play, which reshapes life... Rehearsals go from months to years as truth becomes more and more elusive.

Synecdoche: New York is a sprawling, ungainly beast that baffles, bemuses and intoxicates its viewers. The ‘fun’ rests in trying to work it all out: duplicate characters, time-warped reveries and bleak humour permeating the moroseness of a dying artist suffering for and because of his work.

Truth is, no one makes movies like Kaufman – it is both curse and blessing.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 May 2009 06:59