CHARLIE KAUFMAN, BRILLIANT SCREENWRITER OF BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION AND ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, DIRECTS HIS OWN SCRIPT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND THE RESULT IS… WELL, MAD GENIUS ACTUALLY!
Just so you know, ‘synecdoche’ is a literary term for describing something by referring to a part of it — like saying ‘wheels’ for ‘car’ — and the word itself sounds like Schenectady, hometown for the story’s central character. Philip Seymour Hoffman does sterling work again as an ailing theatre director whose award of a prestigious arts grant allows him to mount the magnum opus that will finally bring him some sense of fulfilment. He turns a warehouse into a massive set, and gets actors to play out the ongoing dramas in the lives of everyone he knows (a ‘synecdoche’ for the rest of us, of course). Somehow, if he can dramatise the stuff of life he can understand it… and all his struggles will have been worth it.
This being Charlie Kaufman’s world, it would be fair to say that all does not go to plan, nor is the enterprise quite as simple as the outline sounds. While the disintegration of his marriage to miniaturist Catherine Keener and the unlikely loss of his child to conceptual art in Berlin (don’t ask!) provide the motivation for Hoffman’s control-freakery, the film, like his grand endeavour, spirals into a giddying whirl of darkly comic complication upon complication, peopled by an extraordinary cast including Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Tom Noonan. At once mind-blowing and heart-wrenching, it’s deeply felt, hugely ambitious, and Kaufman’s finest achievement to date. ‘Must-see’ barely does it justice! — Trevor Johnston.