TIFF: Synecdoche, New York

Tuesday's TIFF screening was the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York. Given his track record of films - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I went in expecting something a bit surreal and twisted...and oh my did I ever get it.

I sit here still unsure about how I felt about the movie, though I can say that there were great scenes and fantastic performances which are definitely sticking with me. The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden, a theater director who's body seems to be slowly shutting down, who has a wife (Catherine Keener) and daughter who seemingly disappear to Germany, another wife (Michelle Williams) and daughter who disappear to a better life somewhere (one supposes) and a mistress (Samantha Morton) who sticks around through most of his life. The story seems to twist in on itself over and over again as he directs a massive production of a 'real' performance including casting people as his wife and mistress. If that makes no sense to you reading it then I'm sorry but I can't really offer more in the way of explanation.

And Kaufman wasn't offering any of his own either. One of the first questions asked was one of those generic "can you talk about what x meant" things and he basically said no...he wouldn't talk about it what it meant to him writing it because he wanted the audience to take from it what they would. Keener and Hoffman showed up to be introduced before the film but didn't take the stage for the Q&A, which also seemed to be by design because they did stick around for the screening. Kaufman did take a lot of questions and was happy to talk about the process of making the film, writing the score and the performances. Just not to enlighten us on the film itself.

If anyone else sees it, I'd love to hear if you walked out as confused as I did.