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Hot Hollywood writer makes directing debut at Cannes
2008-05-24
Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a frustrated playwright who recreates a life-size version of New York, in a Cannes contender Friday by hot US screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. "Synecdoche, New York" is another celebration of the surreal, like the hit movies that made Kaufman Hollywood's resident mad genius: "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation". It was his first turn at directing a feature film and one of 22 films vying for the Cannes film festival's coveted Palme d'Or top prize, to be awarded Sunday. The film's obscure title is only the start of a challenging movie in which characters have only a slippery grip on reality and the audience struggles to distinguish between the "real" story and storylines imagined by Hoffman's character Caden. "Synecdoche" is a term used to describe a part of something that stands for the whole, such as "boots on the ground" to describe deployed soldiers. Kaufman uses the figure of speech as a play on the name of the city in which Caden lives and works -- Schenectady in upstate New York. The cast boasts powerhouse actresses playing women who drive Caden to distraction including Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis and Samantha Morton. Caden starts out as a theatre director whose wife Adele (Keener) leaves him to pursue painting on microchip-sized canvases in Berlin. Her departure drives him into the arms of a fawning assistant at the theatre played by Morton. When he unexpectedly wins a MacArthur "Genius" grant, he moves the troupe to a warehouse in New York City where he presses members of the cast and crew to live out new lives with him in an increasingly realistic mockup of the city outside. Some critics saw the film as a post-apocalyptic vision of New York after a terrorist attack or some other calamity, while others saw Hoffman's character as a stand-in for the eccentric Kaufman. The filmmaker refused to be drawn on the picture's meaning and insisted he had no "message" to impart. But he said the process of directing had enriched his writing by including improvisation and collaboration with the cast. "There were certainly stressful moments but I really like it," he said of directing. "I really like working with actors. I really like talking about the kinds of things you have to talk about when you're trying to understand a character." Kaufman teamed up on "Synecdoche" with Spike Jonze, the director of his best-known screenplays and the producer of the current film. "I think he's just pushing himself and getting more confident to go further and to be braver," Jonze said. "Every script he writes I always feel is that much more raw and honest and audacious. He's by far my favourite writer." Hoffman, who picked up an Academy Award in 2006 for "Capote", said the film's complex story and raw emotion were a challenge. But he said he and Kaufman quickly learned to trust each other on set. "I think (Kaufman) saw every side of myself while making this movie, which wasn't always pleasant," he said. "He took it and you can't say enough about that. And the script probably is one of the best I've ever read."
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