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Synecdoche, New York
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
2008 · Directed by Charlie Kaufman · 124 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 38 frames
Tagline
The end is built into the beginning.
Plot
Theater director Caden Cotard finds his life unraveling. He has mysterious physical ailments and has been growing increasingly alienated from his artist wife, Adele, who creates microscopic paintings. He hits bottom when their couple's therapy fails and Adele leaves him for a new life in Berlin, taking their four-year-old daughter, Olive.
After Caden's successful production of Death of a Salesman, he unexpectedly receives a MacArthur Fellowship, giving him the means to pursue a new theatrical project on a gigantic scale. He decides to create a play of brutal realism and honesty that will span years and into which he can pour his whole self. Gathering an ensemble cast into an enormous warehouse in Manhattan's Theater District, he directs a celebration of the mundane, instructing the cast to live out their roles in real time. As the mockup stage inside the warehouse grows increasingly mimetic of the city outside, Caden continues to seek solutions to his personal crises. He is traumatized to discover that Adele has become a world-famous painter in Berlin and has given Olive a full-body tattoo.
After a failed attempt at a fling with his box-office employee, Hazel, Caden instead marries a leading actress in his cast, Claire, and has a daughter with her, though reality is blurred as he refers to Olive alone as his "real daughter". His and Claire's relationship fails, and he continues his awkward friendship with Hazel while still harboring feelings for her. Hazel lives in a house that is constantly on fire and filled with smoke. She marries and has her own children, eventually returning to work as Caden's assistant. Meanwhile, an unknown condition is gradually shutting down Caden's autonomic nervous system, so he has to walk with a cane.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Charlie Kaufman
- Cinematography: Frederick Elmes
- Edited by: Robert Frazen
- Music: Jon Brion
- Production design: Mark Friedberg
- Produced by: Anthony Bregman, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sidney Kimmel
Cast
- Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard
- Samantha Morton as Hazel
- Michelle Williams as Claire Keen
- Catherine Keener as Adele Lack
- Emily Watson as Tammy
- Dianne Wiest as Ellen Bascomb / Millicent Weems
- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Maria
- Hope Davis as Madeleine Gravis
- Tom Noonan as Sammy Barnathan
- Sadie Goldstein as Olive (4 years old)
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, German
- Studios: Likely Story, Projective Testing Service, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Russia
- Budget: $20,000,000
- Box office: $4,383,538
- Themes: depression, new york city, nihilism, philosophy, surreal, surrealism, man woman relationship, theater director, romance, writer
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