Many of us recall Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death (February 2, 2014) as an untimely blow to the performing arts and the world of cinema. He was simply one of the finest actors alive. A glance at his filmography reveals a prolific, gifted, diverse craftsman delivering one excellent performance after another. One of Hoffman’s overlooked movie pearls was Synechdoche, New York (2008); screenwriting messiah Charlie Kaufman’s directing debut (he wrote it as well). To say the film was ambitious in scope would be a terrible understatement. Kaufman's demanding, enigmatic, profound 20 million dollar movie failed to draw crowds grossing less than 4.5 million.
Caden Cotard (Hoffman) is a theatre director juggling his work, his neurosis, and the women in his life, while creating a life-size replica of the Big Apple inside a warehouse as part of an unprecedented theatrical production documenting the entirety of man's existence. This increasingly elaborate stage production begins to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. Caden’s wife, Adele (a typically bitchy, wonderful as usual, Catherine Keener), leaves Caden and takes their daughter to Berlin where Adele enjoys immense success as an artist in her own right. Caden gets an enormous cast together at a mammoth, multi-leveled structure in Manhattan’s Theater District, directing the actors in an unending investigation of the gorgeous banalities of life, insisting each performer lives his/her part to the utmost perfection. Caden's obsessions yield a doomed fling with the buxom box office girl (the lively Samantha Morton) and an equally doomed marriage with Claire, one of the many actresses in the cast (lovely Michelle Williams); all of this as a mysterious condition may or may not be systematically shutting down his nervous system (hard to tell what is imaginary and what isn't- often the case in neurotics).
Years rocket by with an unforgiving objectivity and the ever-expanding warehouse production parallels the decaying city outside. Caden's obsessions blend the realities of his play with the realities of the actors and crew. That is to say- things get really Charlie Kaufman-esque (Kaufman wrote the wonderfully bizarre, surreal films, Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002)). Synechdoche, New York moves at a merciless speed (just like time- as one ages) and Caden helplessly tumbles to his inevitable death while demanding excellence, detail and dedication from every performer in his monolithic masterpiece.
Hoffman is the obvious choice for the compulsive theatre director, Cadon Cotard. Always able to grasp deep melancholy and potentially dangerous inner turmoil- Hoffman intrinsically understood the sadness of his characters. He excelled playing men talented beyond their peers (Capote (2005)), cloaked in insecurities (Boogie Nights (1996)), guilty as sin (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)), or mired in secrecy and/or shame (Doubt (2008)). Synechdoche is one of his best performances and arguably his most heartbreaking role (a close 2nd could be The Savages (2007)).
Synechdoche fled box offices with a barely registered shrug. It's not inconceivable Kaufman suspected his grim, brilliant, thoughtful opus would be abandoned. Synechdoche, New York one of those films you find. Or someone suggests it to you with sound and fury. It is a movie so self-assured, painfully honest, and so masterfully birthed in the mind of its wily creator- that it was destined to be an uncompromising, gloriously misinterpreted misfit.
Philip Seymour Hoffman’s exacting brilliance makes Synechdoche tick-tock with Kaufman’s mysterious, cantankerous, perennial concerns. For those of you who miss Philip Seymour Hoffman (I do)- watch Synechdoche, New York. You may get emotional. The film was a perfect vehicle for a great actor clearly struggling with the reach, measure and volume of his own mortality and wrestling with his creative ambitions much like the character Kaufman wrote.