The Philip Seymour Hoffman movie Celine Song calls “so mysterious”
With Past Lives, Celine Song announced herself as a serious cinematic force. Her directorial debut is considered by many to be the best film of 2023, a beautifully tender and heartbreaking romantic drama starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro that examines the nature of missed connections and lost moments of love.
The South Korean-born filmmaker had directed two plays at the New York Theatre Workshop before making the leap to cinema, and her future in the industry looks assured. With an ability to weave a narrative of genuine emotion, plus help from phenomenal cinematographer Shabier Kirchner and a gorgeous score from Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen, it’s easy to see why Past Lives earned such plaudits upon its release.
Song’s film is likely to inspire countless generations of future filmmakers and writers, and in a feature with A-Frame, she once turned her attention to the cinematic works that have inspired her the most, paying particular attention to the Charlie Kaufman movie Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“As a playwright, I know that the thing that I’ve fallen in love with in writing or in making dramatic work has always been the parts of it that are theatrical,” Song noted of the 2008 movie. “Theatricality is really at the heart of my first love. And Synecdoche, New York is such a personal choice that really resonates with me.”
Synecdoche, New York is a complex psychological drama written by Kaufman that serves as his first foray into the director’s seat. Hoffman plays a sick theatre director who works away at an increasingly difficult-to-produce play that seems to unwittingly reflect his own life as, in typical Kaufman fashion, the boundaries between fiction and reality start to blend into one another.
“Beyond everything else, I think about that movie as the theatrical taken to its most extreme,” Song added of her admiration for the film, “It’s so much about the writing and so much about the ineffable feeling. There’s something about that movie that I’m always so happy that it exists, because it’s so special and there’s no other movie like it.”
The director signed off with her thoughts on the Charlie Kaufman film, “The ending is so beautifully ambiguous, too. The whole movie is so mysterious, and I really love that.” Song finds a link between Synecdoche, New York and another of her selections, the 2009 Yorgos Lanthimos movie Dogtooth.
“I love Dogtooth, and the reason is similar to Synecdoche, New York in some ways,” she said. “There’s a really amazing theatrical something to it, where the society feels broken down because of the breakdown of language. I’ve always been really curious about that — the way that the language can either make something more lucid or make something a little bit darker or a little bit oblique.”
Check out the trailer for Synecdoche, New York below.
