EH Coverage: Synecdoche, New York

Two weeks ago, I went to this movie with my wife and EH's movie critic Matt Pulling. Well, I was blown away. It's one of the better movies I've seen in recent memory and I may consider buying it when it comes out on DVD. I just recently asked Matt if he planned to review this lovely gem for Evolve Happy. He said he was currently working on other posts. Alright... I thought, what do I do now? Well, how about I just combine all of the reviews and articles I can find on this film and compile them in one post. So anyway, here it goes. Evolve Happy's "coverage" of Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, the brilliant "Synecdoche, New York."
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Los Angeles Times Review
"'Synecdoche, New York,' screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's wildly ambitious directorial debut, recalls the Jorge Luis Borges story in which the imperial cartographers make a map of the empire so detailed and true-to-life that it takes on the exact dimensions of the territory and ends up covering it entirely. Jean Baudrillard famously inverted the story to illustrate his idea about the 'precession of simulacra,' a postmodern condition in which the representation of something comes before the thing it represents, breaking down the distinction between representation and reality completely." read review in its entirety (los angeles times)

Roger Ebert Review
"I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York' twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to. It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely. A lot of people these days don't even go to a movie once. There are alternatives. It doesn't have to be the movies, but we must somehow dream. If we don't 'go to the movies' in any form, our minds wither and sicken." read review in its entirety
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'Synecdoche, New York' is another piece of Charlie Kaufman's soul
"Charlie Kaufman, a diminutive 50-year-old screenwriter with a thatch of uneven curly hair, is all but swathed in existential terror. He's in the midst of barnstorming the world, promoting his long-awaited directorial debut, 'Synecdoche, New York,' a rite of passage somewhat akin to a root canal for the famously shy auteur." read article in its entirety (los angeles times)

Dreamer, Live in the Here and Now
"To say that Charlie Kaufman’s 'Synecdoche, New York' is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now. That at least would be an appropriate response to a film about failure, about the struggle to make your mark in a world filled with people who are more gifted, beautiful, glamorous and desirable than the rest of us — we who are crippled by narcissistic inadequacy, yes, of course, but also by real horror, by zits, flab and the cancer that we know (we know!) is eating away at us and leaving us no choice but to lie down and die." read review in its entirety (new york times)
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Art Imitates Life Imitating Art in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche
"If you traveled the length of John Malkovich's medulla oblongata, hung a sharp left at the desk where Beckett's Krapp recorded his last tape, and walked through the adjoining door of the interstellar hotel room at the end of 2001, you might end up somewhere in the vicinity of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York—a two-hour, loop-de-loop thrill ride so deep into the eternal gloom of its writer and (first-time) director's spotted mind that the Kaufman-scripted Adaptation seems, by comparison, a sun-drenched landscape epic. Like that film, Synecdoche is a partly confessional, partly satirical investigation into the creative process—and the notion (or the absurdity thereof) that art can lead to understanding." read review in its entirety (village voice)

Hope Davis' mind games in ‘Synecdoche, New York’
"It's hard to watch idiosyncratic filmmaker Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York' without thinking a superb watchmaker has gone mad, taking the viewer on a tour of the inner workings of one of Dalí's clocks.

'Oh, God almighty,' said Hope Davis when asked to describe the film, in which she stars with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Samantha Morton. 'The basic story is about an artist trying to fulfill his true purpose, to say something of importance. It's also about negotiating the world, feeling like everything's falling apart. And the house is literally on fire. But I think it's really about the artist's journey, ultimately, and how torturous it is'." read article in its entirety (los angeles times)
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A.V. Club Review
"Without question the most original and distinctive screenwriter of his generation, Charlie Kaufman offered a portal into an effete thespian's head in his breakthrough Being John Malkovich, but it's really the recesses of Kaufman's own conscience that have been explored in films like Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Now that he plumbs ever-deeper into Meta-ville with his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, it would be tempting to peg Kaufman as a narcissist, receding further and further from the world around him. But the charge doesn't stick, partly because he's mercilessly self-deprecating, but mainly because his work is more outward-looking than it appears, touching on themes of love, memory, desire, and, the pleasures and limitations of the creative impulse." read review in its entirety (a.v. club)

Art Imitates Life Imitating Art in Charlie Kaufman's Latest
"If you traveled the length of John Malkovich’s medulla oblongata, hung a sharp left at the desk where Beckett’s Krapp recorded his last tape, and walked through the adjoining door of the interstellar hotel room at the end of 2001, you might end up somewhere in the vicinity of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York — a two-hour loop-de-loop thrill ride so deep into the eternal gloom of its writer and (first-time) director’s spotted mind that the Kaufman-scripted Adaptation seems, by comparison, a sun-drenched landscape epic. Like that film, Synecdoche is a partly confessional, partly satirical investigation into the creative process — and the notion (or the absurdity thereof) that art can lead to understanding." read review in its entirety (la weekly)
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Cannes Review: Synecdoche, New York
Synecdoche: n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword). -- American Heritage Dictionary

The directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation), Synecdoche, New York is a sprawling, messy work of inspired brilliance and real humanity, a film that enthralls and affects even as it infuriates and confounds. Kaufman gives us parts, and the whole; he gives us the general and the specific. The plot is, on the surface, about a theater director, Caden (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), whose work, and life, in upstate New York have both fallen into a state of stasis relieved only by hints of slow decay. His marriage to Adele (Catherine Keener) is a qualified success: somewhat supportive, somewhat loving, somewhat successful, sustained in part by their daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein). And just as Caden's life falls apart personally -- Adele, a painter, takes Olive to Berlin for a gallery showing and never comes back -- he also earns a "Genius" grant, and embarks on an ambitious, immersive theater piece that'll be his masterwork." read review in its entirety

The Universe According to Kaufman
"CHARLIE KAUFMAN, the director of “Synecdoche, New York,” is not trying to be difficult. Then again, when you consider that he made a movie with a name few can pronounce built on a plot that no one, including him, can fully explain, maybe he is." read article in its entirety (the new york times)

Let's see:

Charlie Kaufman Interview from Gordon and the Whale on Vimeo.
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Related: Three Video Clips from Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
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Questions of the Day:
Have you seen this movie?
What do you think of it?