Directors in the mist

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Charlie Kaufman has written a number of really interesting films in the past including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Adaptation (2002) and Being John Malkovic (1999) but makes his directorial début with this film. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theatre director with a large cast including Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Michelle Williams as his parade of love interests.

Starting out as a fairly average domestic based story the narrative gets stranger and more complex as we go. Obviously the film is about the human condition and acceptance of our own mortality but slowly gets more oblique and ambiguous as it goes along. It is hard to call the film confusing as the message it is conveying is clear but it takes a torturous route to get it across, we do not want films that hit us over the head with preachy sermons but it would be nice if trying to follow the plot was not like looking through a thick fog.

The only way that the film makes sense to me is that the central character at some point prior to the start of the film killed himself and the plot is some sort of dream state exploration of his guilt and hopes for what might have been. There are a couple of hints along the way that this may be the case but making sense of the events and progress of time during the film is very hard.

I give this a 3/5, there is a good film in there trying to get out but I think it gets lost in it's self indulgence and ambiguities.