Underplayed Gems

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Synecdoche, New York poster
Directed by
Charlie Kaufman
Genre
drama film
Country
United States
Runtime
2h 04m
Rated
R
Rating
7.5 of 10 from 1,624 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

A theater director with health problems starts a massive stage production that grows to mirror his own life. As he builds a replica of his world inside a warehouse, the line between his art and his reality starts to disappear.

slow-burnmelancholiccerebraldreamlikeunsettlingbleakcontemplativeintrospectiveclaustrophobic

What happens

Synecdoche, New York ( sin-EK-də-kee) is a 2008 American postmodern psychological drama film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman in his directorial debut. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as an ailing theater director who works on an increasingly elaborate stage production and 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 part of the revenue. It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on October 24, 2008, and was a commercial failure on its initial release; executives at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment said they recouped much of the budget through international sales. Synecdoche, New York polarized critics: some called it pretentious or self-indulgent and others declared it a masterpiece, with Roger Ebert ranking it as the decade's best. The film has since appeared in multiple polls of the greatest films of the 21st century. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.