10 Movies You Need To Watch Twice To Completely Understand

5. Synecdoche, New York

After leaving a healthy legacy of astonishing screenplays in the past decade with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman finally pulled up the director€™s chair in 2008 for Synecdoche, New York. The result? His densest piece of art yet. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Caden Cotard, an anxious hypochondriac theater director given the grant of a lifetime for a dream project, to which he then spends his lifetime spending it, never finishing. The film glides through his life from middle age to old age covering the connection and disconnection he feels from the relationships in his life and his eventual loneliness. It€™s packed full of detail, so much detail that you miss it on the second and third viewing too. Within the first 10 minutes, the film seamlessly sails through a year in the life of the characters all through a scene that feels like a continuous one. It suggests the fast paced nature of time and monotony of the routines of our life. It€™s a thoroughly profound and existential film that makes you think about legacy, life, love and death. Synecdoche, New York is especially poignant now in the wake of Philip Seymour Hoffman€™s death as it depicts his character growing to middle age and then old age in very convincing makeup. It€™s arguably his best performance of his career and one that needs more attention. Unfortunately it missed awards and didn€™t do well at the box office and is pretty much holding Kaufman up from directing another project as Frank and Francis was cancelled due to a lack of funds. At least the late great Roger Ebert named Synecdoche, New York the best film of the decade.