From humanistic musings on memory to far more outlandish premises (Such as the ability to control John Malkovich’s body via a hole in the wall) Charlie Kaufman’s uncanny ability to craft oddly inventive yet whimsically endearing screenplays have produced cult gems such as Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind whilst cementing his place as the most creative scribe in Hollywood…
For his latest film entitled “Synechdoche, New York” Kaufman does without the help of regular partners in crime the archetypically indie Spike Jonze and the visually driven aesthete Michel Gondry. Here Kaufman, for the first time in his career, takes the visual interpretation of his script into his own hands. Jonze was originally slated to direct but instead chose to helm “Where The Wild Things Are” whose current status is ambiguous at best.
The plot summary of “Synecdoche, New York” is as follows: “Caden, the main character, is a theatre director. After the inception of his new play, he discovers that his various autonomic functions are shutting down one at a time. The movie goes into themes such as the nature of family, of home, and of male-female relationships, all while blurring the nature of reality and representation in a nature consistent with the earlier work of Charlie Kaufman”
The movie stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton and Jennifer Jason Leigh and proves to be a much darker affair than Kaufman’s previous work. It’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival garnered the film rave reviews and more hype than any Donald Kaufman blockbuster could ever hope to…
Check out snippets from the film below…
