Average Grade: A+
Jack says: A+
"Wow." That is most likely the first thing that you will say upon viewing Synecdoche, New York. But perhaps you will be too strained for even that. In that case you ask yourself, "What just happened?" The question most alarming and intriguing that I thought myslef was, "Is this even a movie?" It's true, this 'film' isn't really watched by anyone. It's thouroughly experienced. The movie lures you in and fully encloses you in itself.
This movie of sorts is astounding. It made me tired to watch. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a playwrite and theater director who is just a plain misfit of life. He can't seem to get anything right. But he does appear to be a genious. And history has shown us that most geniouses plainly suck at life. Caden's wife leaves on a trip to Berlin with thier daughter, Olive for her art exhibition and never returns. He falls for a younger woman whose home is always on fire. He remarries an actress in his play which ends tumultuously.
The first half of the film is rather normal but extensively quirky, but in a totally believable way. Then comes the second act, which is still somewhat of a mystery in my mind. Caden receives a MacArther fellowship and instantly starts planning and writing a new, bold, brave, honest and obscure 'play' of sorts. He is doing this valiantly because he's afraid he's dying, by the way. The play that he creates is the most maddening thing I think I've ever heard of. I could never in a million years explain this part of the film in words perfectly, so I won't even try. You have to watch it for yourself.
The movie makes you lose your own sense of time, as Caden does. You get lost in a confusing world while beholding it. It is a frightening and amazing thing. The film is indescribable at best, and is different for each person in the world. In this film, director Charlie Kauffmen seems to have recreated the standards for a modern-day epic. There may not be rolling hills, billowing dresses, grand explosions or heart renching war-love conflicts but the film is huge in every way possibe. The emotion jumps off the screen and hits you in the face.
Matthew Says: A+
Synecdoche, New York is a compicated film, even in it's title. The word synecdoche means one part representing a whole. Which, if you see the movie makes sense.
The film takes place in the second half of Caden Cotard's life. Caden is a playwrite with a wife, Adele, who is a painter who paints on peculierly small canvases. They have a daughter, Olive,whom they both love dearly. He has just finished a play- a restaging of "Death of a Salesman", get the irony? His wife doesn't come, and later tells him that she and Olive will be going to Berlin, the trip the family was going to go on together, by themselves. But only for a month. Well that month soon turns into forever.
He becomes infatuated with the girl who works at the theater's box office, Hazel. Then he falls for the lead actress in his play, Claire. He becomes confused, and finds out he has some disease of somesort, and thinks he is going to die. Then he gets a letter in the mail, with a grant from the Macarther Foundation. With it, he stages a play about his life, his one last mark on the world.
He stages his play in a strange little, well, not little dome that looks like and undiscoverd country. He makes the play as he goes along with his life making other domes in and outside of it, until each of them is a replica of New York.
It is Charlie Kauffman's directoral debut, but he has written many other films, such as Being John Malkavich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Sotless mind. He also wrote this. It has a great cast, with wonderful performance. This film is truly like nothing you've ever experienced. There is so much more to the movie that I havn't written about, but I can't write about all of it. You'll have to see it yourself.
Sincerely,
The Citizen Review
