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Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York
Synecdoche, New York poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Produced by
Written by Charlie Kaufman
Starring
Music by Jon Brion
Cinematography Frederick Elmes
Edited by Robert Frazen
Production
company
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release date
  • May 23, 2008 (2008-05-23) (Cannes)
  • October 24, 2008 (2008-10-24) (United States, limited)
Running time
123 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $20 million
Box office $4.4 million

Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 American postmoderndrama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is Kaufman's directorial debut.

The plot follows an ailing theatre director (Hoffman) as he works on an increasingly elaborate stage production whose extreme commitment to realism begins to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. The film's title is a play on Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a part of something represents the whole, or vice versa.

The film premiered in competition at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2008. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the United States distribution rights, paying no money but agreeing to give the film's backers a portion of the revenues. It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on October 24, 2008, and generated much less revenue than it cost.

The story and themes of Synecdoche, New York polarized critics: some called it pretentious or "self-indulgent"; others, including Roger Ebert, declared it a masterpiece and ranked it among the best films of the 2000s. It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) finds his life unraveling. Suffering from numerous physical ailments and growing increasingly alienated from his wife, Adele, an artist, he hits bottom when Adele leaves him for a new life in Berlin, taking their four-year-old daughter, Olive, with her.

After the success of his production of Death of a Salesman, Caden unexpectedly receives a MacArthur Fellowship, which gives him the financial means to pursue his artistic interests. He is determined to use it to create an artistic piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can pour his whole self. Gathering an ensemble cast into an enormous warehouse in Manhattan's Theater District, he directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing them to live out their constructed lives. As the mockup inside the warehouse grows increasingly mimetic of the city outside, Caden continues to look for solutions to his personal crises. He is traumatized as he discovers Adele has become a celebrated painter in Berlin and Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend Maria. After a disastrous fling with Hazel (the woman who works in the box office), he marries Claire, an actress in his cast, and has a daughter with her. Their relationship ultimately fails, and he continues his awkward relationship with Hazel, who is by now married with children and working as his assistant. Meanwhile, an unknown condition is systematically shutting down his autonomic functions one by one.


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