Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

Synecdoche, New York
2008
***
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams

Charlie Kaufman has become known for his inventive screenplays for films like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and his directorial debut is equally mindbending, if not more. The wonderful Philip Seymour Hoffmann plays a hypochondriac theater director who wins the MacArthur Genius Award and decides to stage something big and personal. The subject of the piece is nothing less than his own disappointing life, and the ever-expanding production consumes the remainder of it. Kaufman's concept is insanely ambitious and full of brilliant notions about life imitating art imitating life, but the film is a clunky beast. Is he biting more than he can chew or does he need a skilled director to reel in his wild ideas? Either way, it's not a good sign if you find yourself tuning out towards the end. On the second viewing it may turn out to be an unequivocal masterpiece or a piece of self-indulgent nonsense.