Sunday, November 16, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

Head trip ‘Synechdoche’ doesn’t quite connect

A Shorttakes review

Half-masterpiece, half-mess, “Synecdoche, New York” is Oscar-winning scripter Charlie Kaufman’s first film as a director. It proves that the “Adaptation” writer may be better off with someone else behind the camera, helping focus his ideas.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden, a theater director who wins a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. He funnels the money into a massive warehouse theater, and there recreates parts of Manhattan—and scenes from his own life. In this ongoing “play,” his former box-office manager and unrequited crush Hazel (Samantha Morton) is “played” by another actress (Emily Watson), while Caden himself is portrayed by Tom Noonan, the director’s longtime stalker.

Yeah, it’s all very meta.

As this performance art drags on for decades, we see that Caden is using art as a reflection, yet also an avoidance, of real life. Like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” the movie is about lonely people finding ways not to connect with one another. It’s a kinda moving idea, but also kinda obvious.

A big problem? Caden, Kaufman’s onscreen surrogate (like John Cusack in “Malkovich” and Nicolas Cage in “Adaptation”), is a damp, repellant navel-gazer. It’s hard to imagine any of the film’s women relating to him: Catherine Keener and Michelle Williams as Caden’s two wives, Hope Davis as his sinister shrink, and Dianne Wiest as an actress who focuses Caden’s project in ways he can’t himself.

“Synecdoche” is a head trip you have to meet more than halfway. At its best, the movie creates the sense of a sustained dream state or magic realism—something the prankish, surreal master Luis Bunuel would be proud of. 3 STARS—Steve Murray