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Synecdoche, New York | Movie Review

Synecdoche New York - 2008
Directed by: Charlie Kaufman
 
Synecdoche, New York is sweepingly vast in its scope and ambition. There will be no second Synecdoche, New York, in future, and if attempts are made to make a such movie again, then they are bound to fail miserably. Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter, who has written many weirdly imaginative complex stories before, directs his first film, which has the same strange, surrealistic and existential tone to it.


The film requires multiple viewings not just to understand whats going on in the film but you will really want to watch it again. The movie has so many complex layers that it is exhausting to it fully absorb the actual motive of it and what it wants to say. The exhaustion is sadisticly satisfyingly though. The film is about life than anything else. It is about mortality, and illness, and relationship struggles, and loneliness, and neurosis, and obssesion, and fleeting time and its about very question of life and death. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing a playwriter and theatre director, Caden Cotard, he seems representative of you, all of us. He shares our own fears, doubts, neurosis, unattractiveness and obssesions. He is unhappily married, has a kid, and according to himself leading a very meaningless life. His whole life seems wrap up in complaining and whining about those around him, and self pitying his own degrading health. 

Its astonishing how much of this movie is relatable to everyone one of us. The story doesnt have much to do with our need for the plot and its outcome. We just see a struggling man unable to cope with his fantasies, dreams and the actual reality. He have projections of how other people should behave in order to have things for him. He has compartmentalised them to have his own mind work sane. But the people have their own projections about him. They have their own dreams, fantasies, insecurities. And the result is disastrous. 

No matter how much you understand, but it is a must have experience. Charlie Kaufman in his previous films as well, tackled very complex issues of working of a mind. Sometimes using his alter ego, which we see in his Adaptation. In Eternal Sunshine Of Spotless Mind he dealt with the themes of loss and second chance in love while also dealing with fading memories representing our inability to control the floating time. In Being John Malkovich, he puts people in the head of John Malkovich. All of these films are very special and have his own trademark of strange hallucinating, surreal and also comic feel about them. This film is no different. 

And from casting to directing and to acting everything works fine. The actors know their stuff here. Specially Hofman, who played his character to his highest conviction. I cant imagine this movie without him. Ofcouse technically the movie is a masterpiece, it is delicately crafted movie, with great set designs. And have suffocating feel about the space and place, it is dark and depressing. But it is the subject of the movie that matters the most here and how skillfully with how much heart and passion it is handled. 



Rating: ★★★★★






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