Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip
Seymour Hoffman) is mounting a new play. His life catering
to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in
Schenectady, New York is looking bleak. His wife Adele
(Catherine Keener) has left him to pursue her painting in
Berlin, taking their young daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein)
with her. His therapist, Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis), is
better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling
him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel
(Samantha Morton) 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.
However, as the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own
life veers wildly off the tracks. Somewhere in Berlin, his
daughter is growing up under the questionable guidance of
Adele's friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). His lingering
attachments to both Adele and Hazel are causing him to
helplessly drive his new marriage to actress Claire
(Michelle Williams) into the ground. Sammy (Tom Noonan) and
Tammy (Emily Watson), the actors hired to play Caden and
Hazel, are making it difficult for the real Caden to revive
his relationship with the real Hazel. 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.
The years rapidly fold into each other, and Caden buries
himself deeper into his masterpiece. As he pushes the limits
of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a
change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems
(Dianne Wiest), a celebrated theater actress who may offer
Caden the break he needs.
© Sony Pictures Classics. All
rights reserved
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