Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in England lost by six wickets (meaning ‘ the English cricket team’). Continuing from the definition, 'Synecdoche, New York' would mean recreating a part of 'New York' that would represent this mega city in totality and this is what 'Caden Cotard', our protagonist, aims to do while staging his dream play. He is a theater director of repute and has won a 'MacArthur Fellowship' for achievements. MacArthur Fellowship contains handsome prize money and allows a theater director to pursue his dream project. Caden Cotard has led an unsuccessful life so far with his wife, a painter by profession, leaving him with their daughter to Germany. He is also suffering from various physical ailments and doesn't really know what's happening with him. Hazel, a woman who works at his production's box office, is attracted to him but even after knowing that, Caden doesn't really return the favor. This is one decision that Caden comes to really regret in his later life. Hazel marries another guy but not before giving Caden a choice to marry her. Now having lived such an unfortunate and eventful life, Caden doesn't choose any other subject but his 'life events' itself to stage his dream play utilizing the MacArthur grant. He hires an actor to play himself, an actress to play Adele, his wife; an actress to play Hazel and many others who portray the other prominent characters in his life. Year after years pass and they all are in Manhattan now in an enormous, abandoned broadway playhouse recreating the part of New York that Caden has inhibited and is still inhibiting now. Living simultaneously now two lives, everything in Caden's life is turning complex and he really doesn't have a clue what and when he is going to stage anything.....Everyone just rehearses everyday and now it is more than 18 years since the work on this thing started. The line between reality and fiction is slowly and slowly getting blurrier!!!!
As you can see here from the brief, this really is an ambitious film and the one written by Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman has written scripts for films like 'Being John Malkovich', 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' and 'Adaptation'.....These all are movies that find their characters struggling with themselves in an overtly impossible scenario and having no place to go to....They don't get to reconcile with their fates. They suffer incessantly. And they make you think in an emotionally charged environment and a larger-than-life surrounding like this one here in a 'made-up' New York. 'Philip Seymour Hoffman' headlines this movie with Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson and Tom Noonan. They all are superb actors and Philip, now deceased, my all time favorite was my primary reason to watch it. It's critical reception and the way it polarized and bamboozled the top critics in America was my secondary concern. It appeared in several Critics' 'Top Ten' list for year 2008 and some, like Roger Ebert (my role model) even declared it the 'best' of last decade. Like Room (2015) and Boyhood (2014) that released in last couple of years, it's a film that can only get visualized in dreams but realizing it on screen silver and then making it work extraordinarily well, is beyond comprehension and mere words of appreciation. And it was only plausible that Charlie himself directed it for any other director would surely have ruined his 'picture'..........A film unlike any you have ever seen in your lifetime, 'Synecdoche, New York' is a life-study in the most ordinary of characters that surround us!!!!
As you can see here from the brief, this really is an ambitious film and the one written by Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman has written scripts for films like 'Being John Malkovich', 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' and 'Adaptation'.....These all are movies that find their characters struggling with themselves in an overtly impossible scenario and having no place to go to....They don't get to reconcile with their fates. They suffer incessantly. And they make you think in an emotionally charged environment and a larger-than-life surrounding like this one here in a 'made-up' New York. 'Philip Seymour Hoffman' headlines this movie with Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson and Tom Noonan. They all are superb actors and Philip, now deceased, my all time favorite was my primary reason to watch it. It's critical reception and the way it polarized and bamboozled the top critics in America was my secondary concern. It appeared in several Critics' 'Top Ten' list for year 2008 and some, like Roger Ebert (my role model) even declared it the 'best' of last decade. Like Room (2015) and Boyhood (2014) that released in last couple of years, it's a film that can only get visualized in dreams but realizing it on screen silver and then making it work extraordinarily well, is beyond comprehension and mere words of appreciation. And it was only plausible that Charlie himself directed it for any other director would surely have ruined his 'picture'..........A film unlike any you have ever seen in your lifetime, 'Synecdoche, New York' is a life-study in the most ordinary of characters that surround us!!!!
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