Synecdoche, New York

Here we are. My first movie of 2009. Maybe I should not have picked Synecdoche, New York to start out the year. It is kind of a hard movie to explain, or even just talk about, without getting a little confusing. I will just start with the basics. Synecdoche, New York is Charlie Kaufman's latest movie, staring Philip Seymour Hoffman (Caden Cotard - a director), Catherine Keener (Adele - the wife), Michelle Williams (Claire - the actress), and Samantha Morton (Hazel - the box office girl).

Now I guess it is time to explain the plot. This is the very tricky part. You may or may not know that Charlie Kaufman is also the man behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you have seen this movie you may understand why I am clearly stalling to get to the plot description. I really just want to tell you to go watch it yourself and end this post right now, but I guess I should say a little bit more.

Basically, Caden Cotard (Hoffman) is a director who is married to an artist, Adele (Keener), and they have a daughter. Adele has a show of her tiny tiny paintings opening in Berlin and she decides to take their daughter, Olive, with her and leave Caden behind. Caden then wins a grant that allows him to finally do his own work, and he chooses to create a large theatre piece that develops throughout the rest of the movie. Caden starts rehearsals for his show and casts Claire (Williams) as one of his many actors. From here life goes on and rehearsals continue and the piece develops. Essentially Caden is recreating his life through theatre. He keeps casting people, including an actor to play himself, to act out scenes from his life. These include his marriage to Claire, the deaths of his parents, and cleaning his ex-wife's apartment. As the piece progresses more characters and more layers are added. Eventually it becomes a challenge to distinguish Caden's fictional world from his real world. Of course being a Kaufman film, there are a few, and by a few I actually mean many, peculiarities along the way. For instance, a house that is constantly burning and an actual rose pedal falling off of a tattoo.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was wonderful playing the, sometimes, endearingly neurotic director. However, I would also like to mention the excellent job that Michelle Williams did playing the slightly ditzy and kind of adorable Claire. Samantha Morton, as Hazel the box office girl and one of Caden's love interests, was equally as wonderful. Her character stood out to me as quirky, which is saying something in this movie, and generally cute. While watching the movie I couldn't quite place her, but I now see that she played Harriet in Emma and Jane in Jane Eyre.

Synecdoche, New York gets two kernels - quality movie and worth the money.