Synecdoche, New York.

You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it.

I’m in awe. People often say they're not the same person after watching such and such movies, but I've got the impression that they are using that statement a little bit too gratuitously. This movie, though. It reminds me of a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke: “When I was a boy among boys, I was alone among them. I feel perpetually disowned by everyone I know”. This movie is an embodiment of that quote. I’m positive that I haven’t seen anything this gut-wrenching. Seeing every single loved one in your life being taken away from you. Or rather, seeing every single loved one gradually stop loving you, and leave.

It is not solitude. It is ripping yourself apart, day by day. Each day a little less, each day a little more dead. Maybe death is the only thing that can make him whole, now.

The ache of dying. The ache of living. The ache of being. The ache of loving and not being loved.

What was once before you, an exciting and mysterious future is now behind you, lived, understood, disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadness are yours. All her loneliness. The gray, straw-like hair. Her red, raw hands. It's yours.

- Synedoche, New York (2008).