Synecdoche, New York

Catherine Keener, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson

Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. His life catering to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, N.Y., is looking bleak. His wife Adele has left him to purs...( read more  read more... )ue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside. The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, but the textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality.

Flixster Users

71% liked it

Critics

62% liked it

R, 2 hrs. 3 min.

Directed by: Charles Kaufman, Charlie Kaufman

Released: October 24, 2008

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DVD Released: March 10, 2009

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Top Flixster Reviews


  • June 27, 2009
    An excruciating labyrinth. Certainly a critic's spoiled rotten darling. Shows how intelligence and creativity can be channeled into a neurotic filmic nightmare. Insists that there is cause for desperation and fear but there really shouldn't be, there is no time for that. Which i... ...( read more )
  • May 31, 2009
    Sufficiently and delightfully weird in that signature Charlie Kaufman way.
  • May 31, 2009
    Undoubtedly a love-it-or-hate-it movie. And I'm definitely a "hate it" crowd. I'm guilty to not finding elements besides one or two that would keep me clinging onto this film. a surreal, over-the-top life viewed through the eyes of someone mildly psychotic and unstable. The lust ... ...( read more )
  • May 1, 2009
    Many critics have been bashing Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut as lacking exactly that, a director. I disagree. I think Kaufman is more than able to hold a film together. Synecdoche, New York is bizarre, but no more so than Adaptation, Being John Malcovich, or Eternal Suns... ...( read more )
  • April 10, 2009
    This movie seems to be enjoyed by the majority, but for me it's a disappointment. But I'll summarize the following review: if I had the privelege to attend the Cannes when this movie was screened, I would've been one of the many that booed "Synecdoche, New York".

    As soon as I he... ...( read more )
  • July 2, 2009
    Wow... Extremely thought provoking. It has the weird genius of a typical Charlie Kaufman film and the confusing symbolism of something David Lynch might have cooked up (although I found it slightly less abstract and more accessible than Lynch). Definitely going to be one of tho... ...( read more )

Critic Reviews


View more Synecdoche... reviews at RottenTomatoes.com
December 17, 2008
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

It seems more like an illustration of his script than a full-fledged movie, proving how much he needs a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry to realize his surrealistic conceits. full review

November 20, 2008
Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com

You could quite possibly be enthralled -- or not. full review

November 14, 2008
Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

Screenwriter Kaufman's first venture as a director is audacious, ambitious, amazing. It's also intricate, self-referencing, and all-encompassing. full review

November 14, 2008
Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

As the movie rambles along with its own brand of quasi-magical surrealism, the links to real experience grow scarcer and more frayed. full review

November 10, 2008
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

I found it bracing, and genuinely in touch with the sweet chaos and ache of life. full review

November 7, 2008
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle

I was struck by the peculiar magic of this film, even moved by it, once I gave up all attempts to understand it as a straightforward linear narrative. full review

November 7, 2008
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

Synecdoche, New York comes as close as any film has to explaining the epic indignity of the creative process, how some great works collapse beneath their own abstraction. full review

November 6, 2008
Brian Orndorf, BrianOrndorf.com

Kaufman's directorial debut is a piece of performance art that drips with intangible meaning, but lacks any sort of drive that compels the viewer to invest in this punishing two hours of furious artis... full review

November 6, 2008
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

This is a film with the richness of great fiction. full review

October 31, 2008
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

It's all crazy enough to work for a while, but the 124 long minutes don't pass soon enough. full review

Comments


  • vivekmisfit
    May 1, 2009
    " I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due."

    one of the best films ever made. i'm amazed by charle kaufman's writing & directing

    hands down "THE BEST FILM EVER MADE"

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