Sunday, July 12, 2009

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

This movie got some positive reviews and it also got some very negative reviews. I am on the latter half of that spectrum.

The movie is about play director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and his pitiful life. His famous artist wife Adele (Catherine Keener) has left him and taken their daughter with her. Now he's got nothing to really live for. On top of that, doctors think he's dying but aren't really sure from what. So, he decides to make one last play about his life. He buys a warehouse and decides to build a close to lifesize model of NYC in there as the stage for his play. The bad part, he just can't stop making it. The production starts lasting almost as long as his life has.

The main problem with this movie is that you just didn't care about any of the characters except Caden. There was no development surrounding him. Charlie Kaufman, the great writer of movies like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine..., takes the director's chair in this one and adds his style to the flick. It just doesn't make that much sense. At least in those other two movies I mentioned, you can follow them. This one, you really can't.

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