DIRECTOR
Charlie Kaufman
FORMAT
35MM
RUNTIME
2h 4m
RATING
R
CAST
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams
SYNOPSIS
SHOWN IN 35MM
Q&A with filmmaker Charlie Kaufman. Moderated by film critic Amy Nicholson.
‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 3’ and ‘Charlie Kaufman: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’
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.
Q&A with filmmaker Charlie Kaufman. Moderated by film critic Amy Nicholson.
‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 3’ and ‘Charlie Kaufman: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’
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.
CAST
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams
SYNOPSIS
SHOWN IN 35MM
Q&A with filmmaker Charlie Kaufman. Moderated by film critic Amy Nicholson.
‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 3’ and ‘Charlie Kaufman: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’
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.
Q&A with filmmaker Charlie Kaufman. Moderated by film critic Amy Nicholson.
‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair – Year 3’ and ‘Charlie Kaufman: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’
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.
This film is a presentation of the American Cinematheque. Tickets for this (or any other) American Cinematheque screenings at the Egyptian are only available through their site, here.
MORE IN THIS SERIES
AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE PRESENTS BLEAK WEEK AT THE EGYPTIAN
MERRILY WE GO TO HELL in 35mm, THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK, SE7EN, COME AND SEE, UNFORGIVEN in 35mm, MARGARET: EXTENDED CUT, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER in 35mm, MENACE II SOCIETY in 35mm, RATCATCHER, SYNECDOCHE, NY in 35mm, ARMY OF SHADOWS in 35mm, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
DETAILS