Synecdoche, New York is Charlie Kaufmann‘s directorial debut (he wrote it, too, of course), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest.

Plot:
Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a theatre director. He’s married to Adele (Catherine Keener), an artist who paints miniature pictures (and when I say miniature, I mean that you need magnifying glasses to see them). They have a daughter together and even though Caden is constantly worrying about his health, things seem to be going good. Until Adele leaves for Germany to do an art show there and takes her best friend (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and their daughter with her. Then Caden’s life kind of falls apart until he receives a grant that let’s him realise a rather ambitious theatre project: He wants to show life as it is – so he starts rebuilding Synecdoche, a part of New York inside a warehouse.

Well, this is not only a Charlie Kaufmann movie, this is Charlie Kaufmann squared. The outcome is even more surreal than anything else he’s ever done. I can’t say that I know what’s going on in this movie, but I know that I don’t care: I liked it anyway.

As is usual for Charlie Kaufmann movies, there is a lot of navel-gazing, which you have to be able to stomach (no pun intended). Caden is quite the narcissist and obsessed with his bodily functions. But Kaufmann expertly uses that to make the movie just that bit more surreal.

As I said before, I am not entirely sure what happened. It is impossible to distinguish between reality and fantasy. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you’re not supposed to anyway. Either accept it all as real or discard it all as a fantasy. [That’s probably the only way to stay sane.]

The movie has a great cast and it’s cleverly used so that you get the “oh s/he in this film as well!” moments basically until the very end. It was especially great to see Emily Watson and Samantha Morton again (because they seem to rarely appear in films I see, don’t know why).

Kaufmann is a confident director but there’s a little bit of finesse lacking that probably comes with practice. Some camera moves and cuts seemed a little clumsy but nothing too bad.

Summarising, if you like your stuff weird and really good, you’re going to love Synecdoche, New York. Just don’t expect to be able to pronounce Synecdoche, even after seeing the film.