Synecdoche, New York (2008) +

An enthralling excavation of the delicious, taunting terror of intimacy. Charlie Kauffman's film is most basically about emotional insecurity and uncertainty. The film's protagonist Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman, generous and inconspicuous in the role), is an underconfident theatre director teetering on the cusp of serious success/obscurity when his artist wife (Catherine Keener doing Catherine Keener) leaves him, taking their young daughter with her to Europe where the ex-wife achieves unforeseen, formidable acclaim. At about the same time, Hoffman's Caden is named the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant and begins an ambiguous affair with, first, the quirky box office girl (Samantha Morton, in a consistently compelling and enigmatic performance) and, second, his actress-y leading lady (Michelle Williams, absolutely brilliant at the start, fair to middling toward the end). All of this soap operatic sturm and drang is mediated by Caden's own fractured powers of comprehension. He mishears words; he doesn't always understand what he is himself saying. The character, at least at the beginning, seems always just shy of understanding the world around him. With his MacArthur genius grant, Caden commences building his masterpiece -- an epic theatrical creation that is about nothing but the competing truths in daily life. The remainder of the film -- looped as it is with the romantic sagas that mark Caden's life -- explores the collision between art and life as Caden still seeks to resolve his originary pain (the loss of his wife and daughter to a life other than his) through the new work -- and life -- he's creating. The film is beyond legible explanation. Characters refract and multiply promiscuously. Narrative threads stitch knots and braids as well as seams. The film rarely makes sense, especially as Caden gets deeper into the rabbithole of his ever-more massive creation. (He basically builds a replica of his life -- the buildings as well as the people -- within an airplane hangar and he and his collaborators compose the script each day as they rehearse.) Conceit of the whole shebang is deceptively simple: how can you fully live your life if you are constantly imagining how you might adapt and adjust it to be closer to your own ideal of truth? It's the basic problem that informs most "artist dilemma" movies yet, somehow, Kaufman maintains the emotional immediacy of his experiment in ways that are astonishing. Even as the film becomes less scrutable, and more and more meta, Kaufman and his cast are somehow able to maintain not only an emotional accessibility but also a crucial sense of personal urgency. I continued to care about these characters even though I had little affection for them and had no idea who they actually were. The film is plump with excellent supporting actresses -- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest -- each of whom do gorgeous work. (Indeed, Keener is the only mediocre link, and that's just because she's so familiar in the role.) I also really admired Tom Noonan's work as the strange actor who takes on the role of Caden. But the thing I most admired about the film is that, even though it was a complete rabbithole, I never felt frustrated or lost (the way I sometimes do at such moments in films by, say, David Lynch or Woody Allen). I found the film consistently emotionally compelling and the culminating set of scenes in which Dianne Wiest guides Hoffman's Caden toward the acceptance of his own limited mortality were -- like Wiest -- quite simply, luminous. I didn't expect to like this film much at all, having not been much of a fan of Kaufman's previous work. (Indeed, I sometimes feel I'm the only person who was utterly underwhelmed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though I did love Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.) But as a director, I found Kaufman's vision much more immediate, much kinder, and much more human than I had before. I guess I had attributed the über-clever twisty smartypantsness to him. Here, his vision is brilliantly vulnerable and it's an astonishing experience. One last bit to remember: I was amazed by the strange bits of character detail. Hope Davis crammed and blistered into shoes too small for her. Emily Watson wearing a black bra with a backless dress. Samantha Morton's Hazel wearing only jewel tones. (Of course, nearly all the women have abundant bosoms which seems less about their individual characters and more about something else entirely.) But the attention to strange, compelling detail for each of these strange, compelling characters was a thrill to observe - a signal that I was pleased to be traveling this confounding, strange and surprising cinematic journey. Mortality, intimacy, creativity -- big abstract ideas that Kaufman brings to the screen with haunting immediacy. A bizarre, generous bit of genius.