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Synecdoche, New York (2008)

tomatometer

68

Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 176
Fresh: 120 | Rotten: 56

Charlie Kaufman's ambitious directorial debut occasionally strains to connect, but ultimately provides fascinating insight into a writer's mind.

61

Average Rating: 6.3/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 14

Charlie Kaufman's ambitious directorial debut occasionally strains to connect, but ultimately provides fascinating insight into a writer's mind.

audience

70

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 51,821

My Rating

Movie Info

Synecdoche, New York marked the directorial debut of iconoclastic, cerebral screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, an eccentric playwright who lives with artist Adele Lack (Catherine Keener) and their daughter Olive in Schenectady, upstate New York. Prone to neuroses, misgivings and enormous self-doubt, Caden also begins suffering from accelerated physical deterioration - from blood in his stools to disfigured skin. Upon receiving a prestigious MacArthur

R, 2 hr. 4 min.

Drama

Charlie Kaufman

Mar 31, 2009

$3.0M

Sydney Kimmel Entertainment

Cast

All Critics (177) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (123) | Rotten (59) | DVD (11)

It seems more like an illustration of his script than a full-fledged movie, proving how much he needs a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry to realize his surrealistic conceits.

December 17, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comments (7)
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A surreal exploration of art, love and death, it has the Fellini-esque feel of some lost European cinematic masterpiece that reaches far past the normal boundaries of drama and into the very essence of existence.

November 21, 2008 Full Review Source: Detroit News | Comment
Detroit News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's a strange trip, to be sure, but a worthwhile one for those willing to take it.

November 13, 2008 Full Review Source: Arizona Republic | Comment
Arizona Republic
Top Critic IconTop Critic

I found it bracing, and genuinely in touch with the sweet chaos and ache of life.

November 10, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comments (3)
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Synecdoche, New York is a huge film about puny sentiments, an anti-heroic epic of failure, remorse, alienation, and self-pity. It may not be the best film of the year, but it is very likely to be the most extraordinary.

November 10, 2008 Full Review Source: New Republic | Comment
New Republic
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Synecdoche is fun to mull over, for a while.

November 7, 2008 Full Review Source: Toronto Star | Comment
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

An important and intriguing film that must be seen to be believed.

March 24, 2011 Full Review Source: What Culture | Comment

Pocos debuts en la dirección han generado tanta expectativa últimamente. Y de alguna manera su película es tan interesante como decepcionante.

November 13, 2010 Full Review Source: Uruguay Total | Comment
Uruguay Total

The power and tragedy of the love story, or hell, the life story of Caden Cotard will become a part of you, because it is your story, and his story is yours, and back and forth and so on and on because 'everyone's everyone'.

October 27, 2010 Full Review Source: Quickflix | Comment

Art is a dream through which some seek to rise above the mundane. "Synecdoche" is the nightmare of succumbing further to the mundane via art. What could be inaccessible is instead gloriously indispensable - a confounding & combative, but great, film.

October 20, 2010 Full Review Source: Suite101.com | Comment
Suite101.com

The line between reality and imagination, possibility and pipe-dream, become immaterial, and the film becomes the overflowing contents of a fertile mind spilled out all across the screen.

June 12, 2010 Full Review Source: DCist | Comment

His directorial debut is a remarkably deep and rich film, somewhat daunting upon first showing, challenging the audience to take in this complex movie.

April 15, 2010 Full Review Source: Fan The Fire | Comment
Fan The Fire

Inaccessible and endlessly frustrating, Synecdoche is replete with art-house pomposity and the type of muddled profundity one sees in an introductory philosophy seminar.

August 30, 2009 Full Review Source: Washington Times | Comment

Every scene is pitched at the highest level and acted accordingly.

June 28, 2009 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
eFilmCritic.com

Kaufman, who once dazzled us with his japester's invention, uses those same tools to do something else here. He leaves us reeling.

May 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

This is a classic Kaufmanesque work: bold, bizarre and utterly baffling.

May 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Times [UK] | Comment
Times [UK]

This is a movie designed to provoke, entertain and infuriate, that boldly goes into areas where few films from the English-speaking world nowadays dare penetrate.

May 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | Comment
Observer [UK]

Synecdoche, New York finally feels bitter, hollow and adolescent: like a gargantuan music video conceived for an emo band with a penchant for Pirandello.

May 17, 2009 Full Review Source: Independent | Comment
Independent

Synecdoche (pronounced Sih-neck-doh-kee, by the way) is beautifully acted throughout, scripted by Kaufman with the same valorous unorthodoxy as his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and shot with real panache.

May 15, 2009 Full Review Source: This is London | Comment
This is London

Somehow, because it resists unlocking, it feels more serious, troubling, significant. It's as funny as it's depressing. It's as brilliant as it is baffling.

May 15, 2009 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

A soul-altering, heart-changing, brain-transplanting masterpiece.

May 15, 2009 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

A toweringly ambitious and bafflingly confusing film that gives a glimpse of the daily battles going on in the director's mind.

May 15, 2009 Full Review Source: Times [UK] | Comment
Times [UK]

The film is either a masterpiece or a massively dysfunctional act of self-indulgence and self-laceration. It has brilliance, either way: surreal, utterly distinctive, witty, gloomy in the manner that his fans will recognise and adore.

May 15, 2009 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

A difficult, maddening and elusive film that's also intriguing, profound and darkly funny.

May 15, 2009 Comment
Little White Lies
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Synecdoche, New York

You can tell that this film was meticulously drawn out but the final work is hard to comprehend. The film is existential to the max and only lets true scholars understand its true meaning which may make some bitter after watching such a film.

February 4, 2012
paul o.
paul oh

Super Reviewer

Charlie Kaufman, the man behind such interesting screenplays like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Being John Malkovich" tries his hand at directing one such outlandish script of his own, "Synecdoche, New York" (A play of words on "Schenectady, New York", and the concept of "synecdoche" itself!) Plot:

October 20, 2011
Aditya Gokhale
Aditya Gokhale

Super Reviewer

    1. Claire Keen: Knowing that you don't know is the first and the most essential step to knowing, you know?
    – Submitted by Feli Y (6 months ago)

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