2. Caden Cotard in Synecdoche, New York
While the advertising campaign for Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut described the film as a "smash hit comedy", it is in fact one of the most depressing, complex and staggering pieces of filmmaking produced in recent years. Hoffman plays the central role of Caden Cotard, a critically lauded playwright who's undertaking an ambitious new theatre project which involves creating a replica of New York city inside a warehouse. The film charts a string of Caden's divorces, a tragic estrangement developing between him and his daughter Olive as well as the existential weight his latest project imposes upon his psyche as his grip on reality begins to spiral out of control. As he has proven time and time again, Hoffman is at his finest when distorting the lines between comedy and tragedy. Hoffman's performance as Caden sees this ability flourish and crystallise into a character stripped entirely of easy laughs, full instead with distinctly guilty ones. Each vaguely comic moment masterfully collapses and deconstructs itself under the dank weight of his character's loneliness. A stand-out moment in this regard sees Caden walk into his dead mother's house in the wake of her murder at the hands of burglars; upon entering their bedroom he finds it covered in her blood, leading him to state - "I thought someone would have cleaned it up". The camera lingers on his face at this point as he stares at his dead mother's blood, knowing that he's going to have to clean it himself. Initially his reaction is darkly comic (extremely darkly, I might add) but the focus on Hoffman's melancholy as he gazes into both the future (his task of cleaning) and the past (his mother's murder) exiles any laughter into an abyssal oblivion. Moments such as this show the means by which Hoffman can imbue characters with an unnerving level of depth without even moving a muscle. Synecdoche, New York isn't everybody's cup of tea but it is an undeniably bold piece of film making that is made unforgettable by Hoffman's stellar performance as well as Kaufman's schizophrenic appropriation of simulacrum, both coalescing to produce a spiralling postmodern masterpiece that'll give you a headache as well as a heartbreak.