Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Hari A — 27 Sep 2012

A very heart wrenching tale of loneliness and despair, created on a scale so grand by director Charlie Kaufman that you just are struck by its beauty even though it becomes very difficult at time to comprehend. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a playright with a high level of inferiority complex, which renders him hesitant, uncertain and vacillate. His relationships take a beating as time moves on. Pissed off with his downtrodden life, he works on his theatrical magnum opus involving a life size rendition of New York and thousands of actors in a bid to reproduce his miserable life.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is simply superb. He owns the screen with his brilliance. All the other actors have also done a great job. Director Kaufman creates such a cinematic masterpiece here, that understanding it at times becomes difficult. The line between real life and theatre is so faint in the movie that by the end of the move I lost what was real and what was theatre. (Deja Vu: Inception). May be too much ambition was involved in this movie.

A movie not for regular movie buffs, it will not be taken well. The length, dialogues, confusing story will definitely not go well with the regular audience. Nonetheless, Kaufman fuses art and cinema together to produce a great piece of work that is indeed grand!!