Philip Seymour Hoffman

Hello! My apologies for my absence from the blogging world over the past 5 weeks or so.  Mental exhaustion brought on by an onslaught of schoolwork, combined with preparation and travel to Denver for spring break has left me with very little discretionary free time as of late. Don't think I'm neglecting just my blog though; these factors have also caused my bass to acquire a healthy amount of dust, as well as my badminton rackets and cross country skis; (Just kidding, I don't do those last 2 things).

At any rate, I've found myself with a bit a free time this evening and figured there was no more perfect way to spend it then to grace the internet and cinematic community with the inner-most workings of my brain. Kidding. Really, I just want an excuse to talk about one of my favorite actors, Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  Over the past few weeks, I've watched and re-watched a few of his films. Two of them were quite contrasting, and I thought they would make an interesting combination for a post. Enjoy, and feel free to leave feedback!

Synecdoche, New York

This first flick is one a lot of you have probably never seen or heard of.  It made its way through the art-house theaters and was a centerpiece at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, but didn't receive much mainstream attention or recognition. The movie was the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, who some of you might recognize as the writer for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovitch.

In essence, the movie is very simple. In order to really get a handle on everything Kaufman was trying to convey however, requires the viewer to put on a fairly large thinking cap. The plot, stripped free of major thematic elements and symbolism, is this- "Middle aged theatre director Caden Cottard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play". Sounds simple enough, right? Though that brief plot summary remains the centerpiece of what goes on throughout the film, the dense layers of motif and theme make it much more difficult to sift through.

Kaufman was no doubt trying to make a movie about the human experience.  The movie spans almost the entire lifetime of Caden, and addresses everything from romance, to religion, to the existence of the soul.  He struggles with the fact that his wife and child left him, he's torn between feelings for several different women, he endures increasingly poor health, and all the while he's trying to create his masterpiece and life's work. All these factors intertwine to create a man who doesn't really know who he is, and uses his play as a vehicle which allows him to try and figure that out. The play he creates is humble at first; a warehouse with a few different scenes of everyday people in everyday situations.  By the end of the film, the set of his play encapsulates almost all of New York City, and features thousands of scenes with thousands of actors.  These scenes and characters are those of Cadens life; he recreates major scenes that effect him emotionally in a theatre setting and attempts to analyze them from a directorial position and draw some kind of significance and meaning from them. Periodically throughout the film, Caden states the same phrase- "I think I know how to do this play now." The play is Caden's existence, and he is perpetually trying to figure out how to live, and in what direction his life should be going. Caden's play and all the inner-workings of it that represent scenes from his life is no doubt a representation of Shakespeare's idea that "all the world is a stage." As a man who has spent his whole life in the service of the theatre, Caden uses that to try and interpret major events in his life. The stage he is creating is quite literally the world around him, and the characters that inhabit that stage are the ones that have affected him in some way.  For a more in depth look at other major thematic interpretations of the film, check out its Wikipedia page, which does a pretty good job at analyzing everything.

It's difficult for me to say rather or not I liked this movie. One the one hand, it's a breath of fresh air for a movie to actually make you think.  All too common it is today for the viewer to be spoon-fed a story, thus resulting in a movie with little to no actual substance. Synecdoche, New York certainly isn't guilty of that crime.  The characters were intense and challenging to unravel, the plot was substantial and chalked full of nuances and themes that needed to be interrupted in order to really understand the progression of the film, and it was quite the visual masterpiece. On the other hand, the over-artistry of the story, acting, and execution gave the movie a sort of snobby, pretentious air.  Movies like this one are generally praised for being pieces of art, something that makes you ponder, reflect, and appreciate. This movie seemed to take these ideals and beat you over the head with them, constantly trying to shove in your face that this is an "artsy" movie, thus completely polarizing the audience and critics.  Viewers and critics who have an appreciation for the more artistic side of cinema seemed to love it for the pure fact that it was obviously made for them, while more mainstream movie-goers passionately hated on the basis that it was depressing and over-indulgent. I can't definitively make a "see it or don't see it statement" on this piece, so my advice would be to rent and and decide for yourself. Below is the theatrical trailer, which gives a taste for the film.

Doubt
The second Hoffman film that I've chosen to feature is one that is probably more familiar to the average movie goer, Doubt. Doubt also premiered in 2008, first at the American Film Institute festival, and then in theaters later in the year. Along with Hoffman, the movie stars Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, each one of whom was nominated for an Oscar for their performance.  The film is an adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize winning play Doubt: A Parable. Shanley also served as director of the film. 

Doubt is the story of Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the head priest at a Catholic school in the Bronx during the 1960's, as he faces accusations from the schools headmistress, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) of having an inappropriate relationship with the schools only black student. All the while, Sister James (Amy Adams), a younger nun who teaches history at the school, is caught in the middle of the witch hunt and is torn between who to believe.

Though Doubt initially may seem to be dealing with familiar subject matter (sexual misconduct among catholic priests), the essence of what the movie is really about lies in the title itself; doubt.  As Father Flynn discusses in his first sermon of the film, doubt can be just as unifying of a factor as belief. Unfortunately, as illustrated by the film, doubt is equally as dangerous as it is unifying.  Though Sister Aloysius had no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing by Father Flynn, she felt such conviction that it lead her to take drastic measures in an attempt to get him to admit his crime.  This conviction, however, was matched by an equal amount of doubt, as she revealed in the final line of the film "I have such doubts." Acceptance is also an ideal that is pondered throughout the movie. Following one of the more powerful scenes, Sister James accuses Sister Aloysius of disliking Father Flynn simply because he is different. "He takes 3 cups of sugar in his coffee, he smokes a pipe, he likes candy", she says. He is new, progressive, and radical, where is Sister Aloysius is old fashioned, conservative, and traditional.  Perhaps Shanley was trying to convey the idea that we fear what we don't understand. Below is a link to my favorite scene from the movie, in which Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius have their main "showdown."

What I loved the most about this movie is its simplicity.  The cast was small, the backdrop was modest, the budget was low, and yet its message was timeless and perpetually relevant. It took a quaint setting and used it as a canvas to paint a picture of gossip, mistrust, doubt, belief, love, and acceptance.  Equally impressive as the thematic material and visual elements were the acting performances, especially those of Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who portrayed two people of such a polar opposite disposition that you could feel the tension build and nearly explode in every scene they shared. These two seasoned actors complimented each other perfectly by simply being exactly the opposite; while Streep sent chills up your spine with nearly every word, Hoffmans warmth and likability made it nearly impossible to not empathize with him.  Doubt is equally as entertaining as it is engrossing and thematically important, and it is one that everyone should see.