Directed by:
Charlie KaufmanScreenplay:
Charlie KaufmanCinematography:
Frederick ElmesComposer:
Jon BrionCast:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis, Robert Seay (more)Plots(1)
Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. His life catering to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, New York is looking bleak. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis), is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton) has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside. The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, but the textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Cast
Philip Seymour Hoffman
USA
Best movies:
Mary and Max (2009)
Scent of a Woman (1992)
Cold Mountain (2003)
Jennifer Jason Leigh
USA
Best movies:
Who Cares a Lot?: The Greatest Videos (1999) (music video)
Road to Perdition (2002)
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
Michelle Williams
USA
Best movies:
Shutter Island (2010)
The Station Agent (2003)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Samantha Morton
UK
Best movies:
Control (2007)
Minority Report (2002)
The Whale (2022)
Catherine Keener
USA
Best movies:
Into the Wild (2007)
Captain Phillips (2013)
Living in Oblivion (1995)
Emily Watson
UK
Best movies:
Chernobyl (2019) (series)
Corpse Bride (2005)
Breaking the Waves (1996)
Dianne Wiest
USA
Best movies:
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Ściana (1982) (TV movie)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Hope Davis
USA
Best movies:
Home Alone (1990)
Disconnect (2012)
Mildred Pierce (2011) (series)
Robert Seay
USA
Best movies:
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Get Him to the Greek (2010)
Imagine That (2009)
Tim Guinee
USA
Best movies:
Iron Man (2008)
The Lost Room (2006) (series)
Heaven & Earth (1993)
Tom Noonan
USA
Best movies:
Heat (1995)
Quarry (2016) (series)
Mystery Train (1989)
Lynn Cohen
USA
Best movies:
The Station Agent (2003)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Munich (2005)
Gerald Emerick
Best movies:
Pleasantville (1998)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Crimson Tide (1995)
Josh Pais
USA
Best movies:
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Joker (2019)
Phone Booth (2002)
Robin Weigert
USA
Best movies:
Loggerheads (2005)
Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
Pawn Sacrifice (2014)
Daniel London
USA
Best movies:
Minority Report (2002)
Arranged (2007)
Mildred Pierce (2011) (series)
Jerry Adler
USA
Best movies:
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Six Ways to Sunday (1997)
Find Me Guilty (2006)
Alice Drummond
USA
Best movies:
Awakenings (1990)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Running on Empty (1988)
Christopher Evan Welch
USA
Best movies:
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Whatever Works (2009)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Mark Lotito
Best movies:
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
The Saint of Fort Washington (1993)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)