| Synecdoche, New York | |
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Promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Charlie Kaufman |
| Produced by | Charlie Kaufman Spike Jonze Sidney Kimmel Anthony Bregman |
| Written by | Charlie Kaufman |
| Music by | Jon Brion |
| Cinematography | Frederick Elmes |
| Editing by | Robert Frazen |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
| Release date(s) | October 24, 2008 (Limited) |
| Running time | 124 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million[1] |
| Box office | $4,389,522[1] |
Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was Kaufman's directorial debut.
The film premiered in competition at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2008. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the United States distribution rights, paying no money but agreeing to give the film's backers a portion of the revenues.[2][3] It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on October 24, 2008.
The film's title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a part of something represents the whole, or vice versa.
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Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theater director who finds his life unraveling.[4] Suffering from numerous physical ailments and growing increasingly alienated from his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener), he hits bottom when Adele leaves him for a new life in Berlin, taking their daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein/Robin Weigert), with her.
Shortly afterward, Caden unexpectedly receives a MacArthur Fellowship, giving him the financial means to pursue his artistic interests. He is determined to use it to create an artistic piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can pour his whole self. Gathering an ensemble cast into an enormous warehouse in Manhattan's theater district, he directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives. As the mockup inside the warehouse grows increasingly mimetic of the city outside, Caden continues to look for solutions to his personal crises. He is traumatized as he discovers Adele has become a celebrated painter in Berlin and Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). After a disastrous fling with the woman who mans the box office, Hazel (Samantha Morton), he marries Claire (Michelle Williams), an actress in his cast. Their relationship ultimately fails, however, and he continues his awkward relationship with Hazel, who is by now married with children. Meanwhile, an unknown condition is systematically shutting down his autonomic functions one by one.
As the years rapidly pass, the continually expanding warehouse is isolated from the deterioration of the city outside. Caden buries himself ever deeper into his magnum opus, blurring the line between the world of the play and that of reality by populating the cast and crew with doppelgängers. For instance, Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan) is cast in the role of Caden in the play after Sammy reveals that he has been obsessively following Caden for 20 years, while Sammy's lookalike is cast as Sammy. Sammy's own interest in Hazel sparks a revival of Caden's relationship with her.
As he pushes the limits of his relationships personally and professionally, Caden lets an actress take over his role as director and takes on her previous role as Ellen, Adele's cleaning lady. He lives out his days in the model of Adele's apartment under the replacement director's instruction during which some unexplained (and likely in-universe) calamity occurs in the warehouse leaving ruins and bodies in its wake. Finally he prepares for death as he rests his head on the shoulder of an actress who had previously played Ellen's mother, seemingly the only person left alive in the warehouse. As the scene fades to white, Caden says that now he has an idea for how to do the play, when the director's voice in his ear gives him his final cue: "Die."
The film began when Sony Pictures Classics approached Kaufman and Spike Jonze about making a horror film. The two began working on a film dealing with things they found frightening in real life, rather than typical horror-film tropes.[16] This project eventually evolved into Synecdoche. Jonze was originally slated to direct, but chose to direct Where the Wild Things Are instead.[17]
The film was shot on location in New York City, Yonkers, and Schenectady, New York.
The score was composed by Jon Brion with all lyrics by Kaufman.
Following its premiere at Cannes, the film was shown at the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Athens Film Festival, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the Ghent International Film Festival, and the Zagreb Film Festival before its limited theatrical release in the US.
A play version of the film was subsequently published in 2009 by Nick Hern Books.
Synecdoche, New York received sharply polarized but generally favorable reviews, maintaining a 67/100 score at Metacritic[18] and a 67% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.[19] A number of critics have compared it to Federico Fellini's 1963 film 8½.[20][21][22] The Moving Arts Film Journal ranked the film at #80 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time."[23]
In his review of the movie in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert said, "I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film."[24] In 2009 Ebert wrote that the movie was the best of the decade.[25] Manohla Dargis of the New York Times said, "To say that [it] is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now ... Despite its slippery way with time and space and narrative and Mr. Kaufman’s controlled grasp of the medium, Synecdoche, New York is as much a cry from the heart as it is an assertion of creative consciousness. It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now."[26] In the Los Angeles Times, Corina Chocano called the film "wildly ambitious ... sprawling, awe-inspiring, heartbreaking, frustrating, hard-to-follow and achingly, achingly sad."[27]
Negative reviews mostly criticized the film for being incomprehensible, pretentious, depressing, or self-indulgent. Rex Reed, Richard Brody, Roger Friedman, and Chris Carpenter of the Orange County and Long Beach Blade, all labeled it one of the worst films of the year. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+, writing "I gave up making heads or tails of Synecdoche, New York, but I did get one message: The compulsion to stand outside of one's life and observe it to this degree isn't the mechanism of art — it's the structure of psychosis."[28]
The film appeared on many critics' top-ten lists of the best films of 2008.[29] Both Kimberly Jones and Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle named it the best film of the year, as did Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter.
It appeared on 101 "Best of 2008" lists with 20 of them giving it the number one spot.[30] Some of those who placed it in their top ten included Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, Richard Corliss of Time, Shawn Anthony Levy of The Oregonian, Josh Rosenblatt of the Austin Chronicle, Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Scott Foundas of LA Weekly, Walter Chaw, Bill Chambers and Ian Pugh of Film Freak Central (all three of whom placed it at number one), and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who also named it the best film of the decade in 2009.[25]
Charlie Kaufman was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the 2008 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Kaufman was awarded Best Original Screenplay by the Austin Film Critics Association and the film was placed on their Top 10 Films of the Year list.
The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and the Robert Altman Award at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards ceremony; it also was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.
At the 2008 Gotham Independent Film Awards, the film tied with Vicky Cristina Barcelona for Best Ensemble Cast.
Mark Friedberg won the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Production Design.
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