Articles
Phillip Seymore Hoffman
I was shocked and saddened by the news of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s death this week. He was one of those actors who you expected to receive a lifetime achievement award years from now. Each character he portrayed with so much gravitas and subtlety that you forgot you were watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He embodied his characters completely, although most weren’t very likeable. Listening to interviews with his co-stars and friends, they all describe him as a kind and gentle man and a wonderful person to have known.
Some of his memorable roles included Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, one of my personal favourites, Phil Parma in Magnolia, his Oscar winning performance as Truman Capote in Capote, the brilliant scene stealing baddie Owen Davian from Mission Impossible 3, the lonely old man in the beautiful but sad animation Mary, and Max, and he was just about to become famous with a younger generation as Plutarch Heavensbee in the final 3 Hunger Games films, where he plays an intricate part in the finale. He had 7 days of filming left on The Hunger Games when he died. It does however sound like the filmmakers got enough to complete the film. And then of course Lancaste Dodd, the cult leader in The Master, a film that I have so much hate for I can’t even begin to explain. But regardless of my feelings towards the film, there is no denying that it will go down as one of his best roles.
The one film that I would like to stand still on for a moment, is one that I’m sure few people have seen. Most people can’t even pronounce the title, but the one that will most likely remain in my memory as the definitive Phillip Seymour Hoffman film. Synecdoche, New York. I was at times utterly baffled by this difficult narrative and story structure and had to pause for moments just to stop my head from spinning. Although I felt very depressed at the end of the film, I felt like I witnessed something remarkable, a story so complex that I couldn't help but applaud. It tells the story of Caden Cotard, a theatre director who receives a MacArthur Fellowship, giving him the financial means to pursue his dream project without any limitations. He then starts to construct a whole city in a warehouse and starts to recreate his life as a play. In my opinion, he does all this in order to distance himself from his own life, in order to figure out his life. Depressed, lonely and with his health deteriorating, the lines between reality and his play start to blur, and no matter how hard he tries to figure out his own issues, the further he gets from any kind of solace.
When I heard that he died of a drug overdose, by the sound of it an extreme overdose, I immediately thought about Caden Cotard, and I wondered if that role was a reflection of Phillip himself. Was he trying to distance himself from himself and his world, to better understand, or escape, or try to get a grip on things? We’ll probably never know the full story... and I won’t be so obnoxious as to make any statements about someone I didn’t know personally. But the fact remains, it’s so sad for me when we lose an artist, wait... let me rephrase... It’s so sad for me when we loose ANYBODY to drugs. In the case of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, we lost years of great cinema that could have been, and more importantly, his long term girlfriend and kids lost a father and a companion.