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Dir: Charlie Kaufman / USA / 2008 / 123 mins / Cert: 15A

In this mind-bender from Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Kaufman wants to prove that intellectual ambition isn’t dead at the movies.

Philip Seymour Hoffman creates a mesmerizing portrait of the artist as a young, old and middle-aged man. He plays Caden Cotard, a stage director struggling on the fringes in Schenectady, New York.

Then a genius grant allows Caden to construct a huge theatre piece in a warehouse in Manhattan. The subject is Caden’s life, and he takes a lifetime
to create it.

The play is a synecdoche, a figure of speech that indicates a part standing in for the whole.

Synecdoche, New York is exhilarating and exasperating in equal doses and certainly gives you something to chew on when you leave the cinema. - Peter Travers / Rolling Stone

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