Philip Seymour Hoffman died from a drug overdose on February 2 at the age of 46. The shock of the tragedy has possibly only been matched by our belated realisation that the American actor's profound aptitude in portraying tortured souls might somehow have its tenuous roots in real life.
Hoffman (above) was one of the greatest actors of his generation to specialise in playing lonely, insecure and deeply unhappy human beings. He dazzled with a range of distinguished roles in both cinema — 2005's Capote, 2008's Doubt and 2012's The Master — and theatre. His final Broadway appearance was in the role of Willy Loman in Mike Nichols' 2012 revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, a leading part that the actor previously played as a high school senior in 1984.
It is against this background of consistent artistic reinvention that Hoffman's lead role in Synecdoche, New York, the 2008 directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, should be appreciated.
Maddeningly elliptical in structure — as should be expected from the writer-director who also scripted Adaptation (2002) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) — this ambitious drama is, in essence, an overview of the human condition filtered through the eyes of a perpetually troubled genius, the New York-based theatre director Caden Cotard.
The role is played by Hoffman, who had directed his fair share of off-Broadway plays. In just another case of art-imitating-life-imitating-art, the actor is shown at the film's start directing a production of Death of a Salesman.
Although the reviews are good, they're not enough to curb the growing contempt of Caden's wife (an established artist played by Catherine Keener) in a disintegrating marriage. But upon receiving a MacArthur Fellowship, Hoffman's protagonist pours his life into a decades-long restaging of his own existence on a monumental warehouse set.