No Ordinary Fool

Where to begin?

Where to end?

The journey is what is important after all.

The facts are these – Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a flabby, balding middle-aged dramatist whose marriage to a successful miniaturist painter (Catherine Keener) is deteriorating as fast as his health appears to be. She leaves indefinitely for Berlin, taking their child with her. Some time later, his artistic genius is finally recognised with an enormous grant that allows him over the following decades to theatrically replicate his daily life inside of a huge air plane hanger with an ever-growing troupe of actors.

These facts, though, hide much of what Charlie Kaufman’s fascinating and eccentric debut bow as a director is all about.

You could say that it is about love and loneliness… or that it is about well-being and fear… or involvement and detachment… or truth and belief… or regret and renewal…

Because the beauty of this film is that it really does not particularly matter what it is all about. Indeed, anything this profoundly preoccupied with living and dying should always defy easy encapsulation.

Still, there is no denying that there is a great deal of hurt involved here. Deep hurt. Constant hurt. Indiscriminate hurt.

We all live knowing that we will die. We all live as if we won’t.

We desire to start over. We continue to die regardless of doing so or not.

We try to understand our lives, stand outside them, see what their purpose is, give them some unifying theme. However, irrespective of this, the grains of sand still flow steadily to the bottom of the hour-glass.

We keep the home fires burning in the hope of what we desire the most. We fear how the fulfilment of such hopes may end the purpose that we had.

The reflections of ourselves become more numerous. We are everybody. Yet we still feel so alone. So alone.

The paradoxes pile up.

Yet, as sad, as troubling, and as dark as these thoughts may be, there is also a warmth, humour, and human face to this surreal exploration of one man’s surreal exploration that makes this bitter-sweet, intelligent, and novel film so heady, enthralling, relevant, and utterly entertaining.

Hoffman has never been better. His supporting cast of Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, and Tom Noonan buy wonderfully into their parts. The wistful, lonesome score sorely aches. The set, the script, the direction, …

Och, I could spend a lifetime telling you about it. However, Caden Cotard has already done that amply for me. Just go see it. Again, and again, and again.

Cinema to be adored.