This might be the weirdest mind fuck of a movie I have ever seen. It's one of those movies where you sit in your chair for about 30 seconds after the end of the movie and you say to yourself, 'Self, what the fuckk was that?'.
It was released in 2008 and directed by Charlie Kaufman. So Mr. Kaufman is a famous screenwriter with such indie hits like 'Being John Malkovich', 'Adaptation', and more recently 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. But holy hell, this movie is a cluster bomb of ideas.
It stars Philp Seymour Hoffman as Kayden Cotard. He's a theater director who gets a MacArthur grant. This is basically the genius grant. So he goes on to build this lifesize New York city theater production.
Spoilers Ahead
My god. I'm still not sure if I just saw pure cinematic genius or utter insanity.
On one hand it's completely magical-realism like Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. This person is building a theatrical production to mimic his life. It runs parallel and intertwines with his life. In the end, it's almost the story of everyone trying to figure out what this life is. He is dying but we see time jumps and becomes old. Everyone dies is the message here I think. In the end, there is nothing. All your work is for naught, deserted, meaningless to you.
On the other hand, the pacing just crawls to slow pace and really throws a lot of weird details at you. The woman that he desires lives in a house that is constantly on fire. His daughter is brought up by german hippie that sexually molests her, in which the daughter translates in to love. These fantasy elements really play with what is a stage and what is life. Is life a stage? Are we all playing a part in the grand play?
It's only been five minutes. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this.
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