'Synecdoche, New York'

He's marveling at the struggle and the longing, multiplied by the billions, in the face of futility. He's having an existential freakout on an epic scale. - By CARINA CHOCANO

NVDL: Life is precious, life is short. On close examination, life is tragic and miserable. So step lightly through it, and stay lively, and try to enjoy the moments you can without judging them. Life will judge you anyway, so make the most of every confusing, fucked up moment and push away the awaiting madness and chaos and darkness for as long as you can...

clipped from www.nickvanderleek.com Hoffman commits himself completely to Caden's mournfulness, to the sadness that comes with realizing, as he does in the end, as what was once "an exciting, mysterious future" recedes into the past, "that this is everyone's experience, every single one; that you are not special; that there is no one watching you and there never was." This sounds hopeless -- too hopeless, even, for some of the characters in the film, who chafe at Caden's vision. There's beauty everywhere -- in the transporting score by Jon Brion, in Hoffman and Morton's performances, in Adele's paintings (actually the miniaturized paintings of an artist named Alex Kanevsky), in the fact that we struggle in the face of futility, that as Caden tells his actors, we simultaneously fear and don't believe in death. That the house is on fire from the day you buy it. That the house is never not on fire. clipped from www.nickvanderleek.com