7If you put 10 different people in a room and asked them their opinion
of this 2008 drama, I suspect you'd get 10 different answers ranging from
"great" to "awful". My personal opinion is somewhat in the middle. This
movie is an intensive character study that sometimes drags, but an
outstanding cast and excellent acting save it from being really bad.
However, that doesn't make it really good.
After a successful production of Death of a Salesman in a regional
theater in Schenectady using uncharacteristically young actors, theater
director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is awarded a MacArthur
grant to create a new play. He decides to immerse himself in creating a
play with brutal realism and honesty, something on a grandiose scale.
Caden rents a warehouse in New York's theater district, and constructs
a mockup of the city, which he populates with an ensemble cast to
duplicate the mundane moments of his life and the people that inhabit it,
including the many women in his life. As months turn into years and more
and more characters are added to the cast, things become more bizarre as
the script keeps changing to reflect the changes in Caden's life,
including multiple chronic illnesses. Still, the play is never finished to
the point of opening.
Yeah, this is another really weird one, but some of the character
studies are fascinating. It simply isn't for everyone. The caps are from
the Blu-ray version.
