An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Charlie Kaufman.
Cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson
Description: Reality fragments as painter Adele Cotard calls a time out from her marriage to beleaguered theatre director Caden, and decides to head for Germany with their four-year-old daughter, Olive, to give the relationship a little breathing space. He falls under the spell of box office tease Hazel and wins a grant to stage a theatrical experience like no other. So he attempts to distill his own life on stage hiring Hazel as his assistant and casting actress Claire to play Hazel on stage. Marriage beckons and Caden recasts actress Tammy as Hazel. Layers of illusion and fantasy overlap until Caden's entire world threatens to collapse around him.
Country: US. 2008. 123mins
At a difficult stage: unhappy director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman, far left) with Claire Keen (Michelle Williams) and Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan)
The title is not the only puzzle in Charlie Kaufman’s first ambitious plunge into directing.
It is a movie that will inspire love and hate in equal proportion, an art film with an A-list American cast which is as far away from what Hollywood might call commercial as anything emanating from the auteurs of Europe.
Caden Cotard, the middle-aged theatre director protagonist, superbly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is contemplating the failure of both his health and his marriage. His small daughter emits green poop, and the top of a tap hits him on the head while he shaves, necessitating several stitches.
The doctor who does the stitching discovers there is something wrong with one of Cotard’s eyes and suggests he sees a neurologist. Then he has a seizure, and soon pustules begin to grow on his skin.
Meanwhile, his wife (Catherine Keener), a photographer, is befriended by Jennifer Jason Leigh’s lesbian and decamps to Berlin with the daughter for an exhibition of her work. When he rings her, she cuts him off announcing she is now a celebrity.
This is more than his career has amounted to. He is directing a version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with an inappropriately young cast at the local regional theatre in Schenectady, New York. To say he is not a happy bunny would be an understatement.
There are, however, women wishing to come to his aid. One is Samantha Morton’s candid Hazel, who gets him into bed but can’t inspire him to have sex. Then there are two adoring actresses — Claire (Michelle Williams), with whom he eventually shacks up, and Tammy (Emily Watson). But none of them can stop his depression mounting.
The totally different second half begins when Caden receives a generous grant after the mild success of the Miller production and decides to mount a work about the human condition in a vacant New York warehouse.
He instructs his ensemble cast to live out their constructed lives as if they are in the outside world of the streets — and the result is a tangle of real and theatrical relationships moderated by a man hopelessly tangled up with his own mortality.
This second hour is what will split audiences asunder. Many will simply not understand what is going on or reject the weirdness. Others will hail Kaufman’s soaring ambition and find the film both poetic and profound.
Without deliberately sitting on the fence, I’m right in the middle of these sentiments. I loved the first half of the film and grew tired of the complexities of the second. It is not that Kaufman is pretentious; it is that he seeks out several different levels at once with the aspirations of a film-maker refusing any compromise.
Synecdoche (pronounced Sih-neck-doh-kee, by the way) is beautifully acted throughout, scripted by Kaufman with the same valorous unorthodoxy as his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and shot with real panache. It’s about someone who can’t deal with “now” and so both regrets the past and dreads the future.
Stricter editing of that puzzling second half might have made it more like the masterpiece some think it.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I watched this film wondering what on earth was going on and wishing it was over. Could it really all be reduced to the sententious speech by the (fake) priest in the (fake) funeral scene ie that life is pointless and human effort unrewarded? The relentless unattractiveness, both physical and psychological, of the characters is a serious deterrent to keeping interest. What's it all about Charlie?
- Jennifer, London
Morning:
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