His wife Adele has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one.
Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside.
The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, but the textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality.
His wife Adele has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one.
Worried about the transience of his life, he leaves his home behind. He gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in New York City, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a growing mockup of the city outside.
The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, but the textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden's own deteriorating reality.
This rather strange film is the story of the life of an even stranger man in the form of Caden Cotard - a theatre director who seems almost totally immersed in the play <i>Death of a Salesman,</i> in which he casts very young actors as Willy and Linda Loman. Caden suffers from depression and a whole string of personal ailments; becomes alienated from his wife Adele (Catherine Keener,) and begins a flirtation with Hazel (Samantha Morton) - the woman who works in the box office. Over the years: the more Caden strives for ever-ongoing-more ambitious perfection with the play, the more his life unravels and vice-versa. Eventually, the borderlines between reality and the play become blurred... Well-acted throughout: it's...er, well...at least its something <i>different!</i>
Studio | Sidney Kimmel Entertainment |
Country of origin | South Africa |
Release date | April 2009 |
Availability | Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available. |
Directors | Charlie Kaufman |
Actors | Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson, Jennifer Jason Leigh |
Dimensions | 192 x 137 x 15mm (L x W x T) |
Format | |
Running time | 1 hour, 59 minutes |
Region encoding | Region 2. This DVD will play in all South African DVD players. |
Video format | Widescreen 2.35:1 |
Age restriction | 16 SNL |
Categories | |
LSN | XDS-3FP-4FH-6 |