Synecdoche, New York (2008)
****/****
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener
written and directed by Charlie Kaufman
by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I don’t feel up to writing about Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (hereafter Synecdoche), because, as with something like Mulholland Drive, it’s in the writing about it that one is bound to discover one has said altogether too much about oneself and altogether not enough about the film. The picture is a lot like Nietzsche’s abyss, you know: the more it’s examined, the more it’s a dissection of the critic’s own fears and prejudices. There’s a scene early on where theatre director Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman–cast because he’s fabulous, and maybe because “Hoffman” incidentally rhymes with “Kaufman”) sits by himself on the floor next to a telephone and we notice more than he does that there are a couple of strange boils growing on his leg. It’s just something Caden lives with, and this visual comes sandwiched in the middle of an extended, uncomfortable sequence that begins with a gash to the forehead (and a glimpse into Caden’s vanity when he’s told it will scar), progresses through gum surgery and the revelation that Caden’s contracted a virus that’s made it difficult for him to salivate, and ends with his wife (Catherine Keener) and five-year-old daughter abandoning him, moving to Germany with monstrous nanny Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh).