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syn⋅ec⋅do⋅che: a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special 'Synecdoche, New York' marks Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. A monumental event on its own right. It is a maddening venture, a staggering project to face life's greatest of mysteries. Kaufman takes us on a soul-searching journey, one that he is taking every bit as much as we. It is a trip unlike any I have ever seen, and to say that I enjoyed it would be a very difficult thing to say. But 'Synecdoche' seems to be pointing towards something very profound, as undecipherable as it may appear. A flawed masterpiece, and a risk Kaufman seems willing to take.

There's nothing easy about 'Synecdoche', it is one of the most difficult films I've sat through. It's the sprawling story of one man's life, a tragic life. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a harrowing performance as his character attempts to create a play of realism and honesty. And even as he dives head first into his work, his own life is in a perpetual state of free fall. A wife who leaves him, a daughter out of his life, relationships that crash and burn. His play, inside a warehouse where he has reconstructed New York City for people to live our their ordinary lives, becomes a fruitless and maddening descent into unhappiness and destruction.

What is 'Synecdoche' about? Is it one man's search for meaning in the midst of meaninglessness? That in order to appreciate the preciousness of life, we must accept the inherent chaos. Existence is what we make of it, and it is the choices we make that shape and define who we are and the lives we lead. Every choice brings with it a million different consequences, some seen and others that go unnoticed.

Kaufman tells us we are one in a world of many. We each play a starring role in the story of our life. People we meet every day, those we know and love. Never will we truly know them, their thoughts, or why they do what they do. And maybe it's not up to us to decipher what we will never understand. We must look inward, not to others, to find peace and insight.

If life is a play, the world is our stage. We only have this one shot, no second chances. We try to control our projectories, cast roles that need to be filled. In the end, what does it matter? Will the world miss us when we're gone? Life is what you make of it. 'Synecdoche, New York' dares to search for meaning, reconcile paradoxes to which there are no answers. But that doesn't keep Kaufman from giving it his best, as tedious and heart-wrenching as it may sometimes be.

More reviews: rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view.php?journalid=219276&view=public

There's some happenings in the movie which are very abnormal and weird. The main idea is great but in total I felt confused too often, not because of intellectual difficulties in understanding but because it's presented in an odd way. I feel drained after watching, not greatly inspired. A big weird movie which shows the mostly depressing and confusing late life of a theater director.

Theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is physically falling apart. He is working on the play Death of a Salesman with his leading lady Claire Keen (Michelle Williams). His wife Adele Lack (Catherine Keener) goes on a trip with their daughter Olive. Box office girl Hazel (Samantha Morton) keeps flirting with him. He gets a grant and rents out a giant space. He starts building a play where the cast does everyday things. The world inside the giant space starts becoming more real than the real world. Caden and Claire become parents with a girl as reality and fiction become indistinguishable.

This is a highly ambitious movie coming from the outsider mind of Charlie Kaufman. The start is pretty slow especially with a depressed Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie turns very loopy, imaginative and utterly original. This is a movie trying to be life itself. It loses some of its cohesiveness as it tries to be too much. At times, I'm both resigned to not being able to grab hold of the story and interested to see more loopy ideas. I give Kaufman full marks for being unrestrained in his vision but this may need a bit more to make it an accessible watch.

It's virtually impossible to summarize my feelings on "Synecdoche, New York." This astonishing brain teaser from the mind of Charlie Kaufman affected me deeply, probably more than any film I've yet seen this year. I can't say it's necessarily enjoyable, because it's full of uncomfortable, brave truths about what it means to be human, and it goes places most movies don't dare to. But watching it is a bracing experience, and it's encouraging to know that there are still filmmakers willing to use film as a means of challenging their audiences and picking at scabs that most people would prefer to remain solidly in place.

I can't begin to tell you what "Synecdoche, New York" means, and it wouldn't matter anyway, because I think it will mean different things to different people. A basic summary goes something like this: Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a morose, depressed theatre director who's convinced that fatal diseases are lurking around every blood vessel, and who decides to stage a monstrous, ambitious theatrical work that will leave him remembered after he dies. Soon, the work as he's staging it becomes confused with the life he's living, so that he finds himself directing a version of himself through a story that seems to be made up as it moves along.

If this sounds like an act of mental masturbation by a pretentious intellectual with too much time on his hands, rest assured: "Synecdoche, New York" is not one of THOSE films. I didn't become impatient with Kaufman or his characters, like I have with some of his previous projects. In fact, this film made me uneasy because of how much of it I DID relate to. The conclusions it draws are that we are all alone in this big universe, life doesn't necessarily have any meaning other than what one brings to it, and there is not a higher power who is going to make sure our passage through the world makes sense. It was a bit of a wake up call to hear these beliefs, beliefs that I happen to share, stated so boldly, for while I'm confident in what I believe, that confidence doesn't make the beliefs themselves any less scary.

But depressing and nihilistic as those beliefs might sound, the film is life affirming in its own way. It suggests that too many of us spend too much time trying to make sense of the world and not enough time living in it. We pull back in loneliness and fear when faced with things bigger than ourselves rather than turning to those who can actually help, namely the other human beings with whom we share our time on this planet.

"Synecdoche, New York" will not likely find a big audience, as most people will either not want to work at understanding it or won't like what it has to say. But if you're willing to go into it with an open mind, you might just find yourself amazed.

Grade: A+

To start, let's make it clear that this movie will not be for everyone; I don't think any form of authentic art is. There is no flaw in this truth or in the people who do or do not find themselves moved by the art in question- it just is.

I do believe there are people who more intuitively and naturally reflect inward, on death, on life- the meanings of all these things; it is a natural state for them. And I believe there are people as equally blessed and cursed to not think very deeply on these matters. I think this film will find a comfortable home in the hearts of the former. Now, of these "inner seekers"- I believe you have all variations of folks- those that seek deeply and find beauty, connection, and great joy. There are those seek deeply and find isolation, grief, and deep wells of sadness. There are those who find some semblance of balance between the two. I myself lean more towards connection, and subsequent joy because of that… I found this movie to be profoundly moving- on almost a primordial level- and I believe- in a hopeful way. Don't get me wrong, I cried many times during the movie and didn't want to leave the theater when the film was finished. I held back the wells of whatever it was that was welling up in me until I got to my car and then unloaded some body shaking tears. It wasn't sadness, though… it was… something else. I don't really know yet. One thing I do know is that all of Kaufman's films seem to affect me in this manner. After the initial viewing- I know distinctly how the movie has affected me emotionally- I can FEEL it. I am not capable of defining that feeling, or explaining why that feeling has erupted (it is clear to everyone that his plot and content are generally all over the board and it usually takes several viewings to pull any real intellectual analysis from them)- but I certainly am conscious of something new and fresh happening inside my emotional hard wiring. I find that a phenomenal feat in the face of a sea of art which relies on very standardized ways of pulling it's consumers in emotionally. Do you remember how you felt after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? I remember walking out and feeling very hopeful about the nature of love- in a whole brand new way. Not in the contrived, standardized Sleepless in Seattle kind of way… not to judge that- but there is something amazing about an artist who can make you feel things you are not sure you've felt before. That, to me, is authentic art. This really isn't about valuing one thing more than another- just offering great respect to someone who has taken your mind and heart to places it hasn't been before. It is nice to visit those old comfortable haunts, but this… well, like all of Kaufman's films- will take you somewhere entirely new- if you are predisposed to that kind of wandering.

Note: This works MUCH better on a repeat viewing, practically a masterpiece, and one of the perfectly sad comedies ever made... though the last ten minutes is a slog (perhaps intentionally, as it's near the end of the tunnel... but it's still unbearable).

Over the course of my teenage years I've seen Being John Malkovich through Eternal Sunshine (those two the M-word, masterpieces, with Adaptation and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind near-great, and Human Nature a fun minor work), and he's always given something to chew on for the brain. He's an incredible wit, maybe too incredible, like something that could combust with the amount of ideas and ruminations and skill at defining what's important to us as people and what we want out of art. Synecdoche, New York could be seen as his life-summation of what concerns him as a writer. And to call it art is simple, because it is: it is, alongside the something like Inland Empire, the most challenging work to come out of American cinema. To say that either one is flawed may come as something as a given, but for Kaufman it's somewhat more troubling.

This is a big film of ideas, crucial, life-affirming (or life-damning) thoughts about love and death and loss and forgiveness and, essentially, the process of trying to recreate and recreate and recreate this. But at the same time the intellect to engage full-tilt by Kaufman the writer, the director couldn't engage me as a viewer emotionally - at least at first. This changed on a second viewing - I'm reminded of Woody Allen's assertion on multiple viewings of 2001 that Kubrick was much ahead of him on what he was doing - but on a first impression I have to wonder, with everything going for Kaufman the satirist, the original, the sad dramatist, what the movie's audience really is. Like the play that is rehearsed for decades that Cotard never brings to his audience, what can one take away from Synecdoche, New York as far as connecting with the characters, or just Cotard?

Maybe it reveals something about me just talking about this; indeed this is probably the film of the season, if not just the year (Dark Knight fanatics take note), that you will want to talk about after it ends. As far as puzzling works of art go it's great for a good argument, especially if one is familiar with how Kaufman's work has been leading up to this point. It's not exactly that the film is ever so confusing that one will want to walk out - there is a logic, in a sense, to the life imitating art imitating life imitating art etc etc aspect that makes sense.

When Kaufman, as director, makes his film this time about as hopeful as Franz Kafka rewatching the Zapruder film on a loop, even the scenes and moments that *do* feel somewhat powerful emotionally (i.e. Hoffman seeing his daughter in a nudie-booth, or the final scene on the bed with Hoffman and Morton old and in bed with the house, once again, on fire) don't hit their mark - again, at least at first. It's almost as if seeing the film again it becomes deeper, more resonant; like any work of art at another point in one's life, it could change, and if one gives it the chance it does.

Certainly the cast makes it worthwhile to watch: Hoffman is what he is, brilliant at transforming physically as age goes by as Caden Cotard, and at delivering subtle moments of humor amid his health-decay; ditto in her own right to Morton, who ranges from bubbly and lustful to anrgy and dejected (Michelle Williams, too, shows this range); even a bit part by Dianne Wiest is appreciated. They all help to give life to what is a big, somber meditation on (quoting Douglas Adams) Life, the Universe, and Everything.

And yet, expressing my (initial) disappointment over the length (at 124 minutes it feels twice as long) or the music (did Kaufman order "kill-myself-piano-tunes-you'll-love off of ebay for this?) or the personal problem of connecting emotionally with some of the characters as they (intentionally) don't really grow, shouldn't, I hope, diminish recommending Synecdoche, New York for anyone who wants something to challenge them, provoke thought and discourse, to engage and disrupt brainwave patterns. Perhaps there should be some disappointment; like life, and the art pulled out of it with pliers, it's not always a pretty sight, especially near the end. But it is a unique journey I was glad to take, and I hope every few years or so to come back to it, and see if it changes me, or if I've changed, since seeing it last.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players . . ."

Synecdoche, New York, like the literary term in its title, might stand for all our lives as director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) attempts a gigantic stage construction of to depict his tumultuous life. Hamlet 2 it is not—it's a serious attempt by cerebral and creative writer Charlie Kaufman to deal with the muses and mistakes of a life worth noticing, in this case where Caden has won a MacArthur.

Caden eventually creates a discursive and massive stage play peopled by ex lovers who help him try to gain meaning out of a sometimes bleak Brecht or Beckett landscape. Kaufman takes us into and out of time and place, characters and ideas, so that to survive the viewing, we must allow him to digress and symbolize to distraction. The recurring motif of a house on the brink of burning down signifies the nearness of insanity and even death.

The specter of Death overshadows all else and serves as a catalyst for the artist's grand opus. It also allows him to muse on the meaning of life and the challenges of art, the former leaning toward a pantheistic notion that we are all made up of the people we have loved. Shakespeare's notion of the world as stage is more appropriate here than ever.

Artistically Kaufman is more in David Lynch land than anywhere else; I'm comfortable with that although the producers should not wait for the profits to roll in anytime soon—it's a challenging mess.

Caden Cotard: "I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due."

It was bound to happen. The brilliant writer of "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" made his directorial debut. Interesting, yes, without question, but self conscious to the point of distraction. Kaufman's mind with all its implications is a the center of this dream colored by illness and paranoia. Strange echoes of Julian Beck and Luis Bunuel made the experience rather gripping but I must confess I felt the need to run home and take a long shower after the film and read something funny, I selected Alan Bennet's "Uncommon Reader" It worked. I may even go again to see this Charlie Kaufman film with its unpronounceable title. I guess that even that is on purpose, so we all can refer to it as Charlie Kaufman's movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, as usual. This time I also felt his body odor. Yuck! I remember Hoffman's dirty fingernails even when he was playing Truman Capote so I presume that is the actor's trait and not the character's, although, here, the filth that he exudes matches perfectly his story. Catherine Keener and Emily Watson are also superb but Samantha Morton, once again, got me completely. I will advise you to see it, at your own risk.

I got to see a screening of this in Boston, and let me admit to the fact that I consider this film a masterpiece. It is a rare entry into the market: an ambitious film, a gamble that, sadly, makes me question how much success it could garner in the mainstream box-office.

Charlie Kaufman, however, is not a screenwriter/director who inherently aims his sights on the box-office or the mainstream (anybody who questions this has to question Being John Malkovich). Instead, his greatest strength is a boundless creativity and insight into the qualities of humanity, and Synecdoche, New York is no exception. Rather, it is the apex of Kaufman at his most insightful, his most ambitious, and (as his directorial debut) his most hauntingly beautiful.

The plot itself is a contradiction of simplicity and complexity: to say that it is about Philip Seymour Hoffman trying to put on a larger than life play is an accurate statement, yet it completely fails to capture what Synecdoche, New York tries to convey. It is not a conventional film, but instead it is ambitious: a mixture of conventional narrative and surrealist cinema, one where the beauty of the film does not solely lie upon the plot, but the way every minute quality of the film ties together to form the tapestry.

The actors all do their parts brilliantly. I am hard-pressed to find any performance that was weak or, for that matter, standard of the Hollywood formula. Hoffman is brilliant in a role that utilizes his physical and acting gifts, and he takes the character through the spectrum of its possibilities. All the other actors also performed brilliantly, although what struck me as wonderful about the acting choices are that the majority of the actors present are not "glamorized" for the screen. Rather, the blemishes, the age, and the imperfections that make them ordinary are ever present in the film, making Synecdoche, New York seem beautiful in a strange, "dirty" way. Much like a city, its majesty lies not in grungy street corners or clogged rain gutters, but in the whole image that is comprised of such small, necessary imperfections.

And that, ultimately, is why Synecdoche, New York is such an ambitious, beautiful film. It is not a perfectly crafted standard screenplay, nor a perfectly executed piece of cinema. At least, Kaufman's work is not perfect under the current criteria of modern cinema. Synecdoche, New York is a gamble; a mixture of images and music and dialogue and acting that follows Kaufman's heart and his meditations on several ideas: namely, those on life and death and the connections all around us. It is dark yet funny, evocative and haunting. It is perfect in being a work of art that tempts us to find explanation, yet ultimately needs none compared to the feelings they evoke in us.

Viewers who are looking to see the difference between "art" and "entertainment" need only see Synecdoche.

I almost watched Synecdoche, New York. After about half an hour, it became the droning background as I read IMDb reviews, starting with people who gave it the lowest possible rating (I gave it 2 because it is, at least, original, not an adaptation). Normally 1-star reviews are terse expressions of disappointment, but in the case of Charlie Kaufman's fiasco, knowledgeable cinéastes showed up, in numbers and in high dudgeon. So while the movie dragged on, I was perversely delighted by the posse of ruthless, erudite, and funny critics who posted lines like "To call this movie pretentious is an insult to pretentiousness"-- a contention proved this line of dialog (chosen almost at random): "Caden Cotard is a man already dead, living in a half-world between stasis and antistasis."

Seriously.

Another writer took the time to get specific: "Think about the ways that a movie can be bad. It can be horribly depressing for no particular reason... It can be confusing, with a plot that is impossible to make sense of... Or it can be annoying, with lots of pseudo-clever gimmicks that don't work. Synecdoche manages to be all three kinds of bad at once."

Precisely. Not only grandiloquent, but gratuitously repulsive with the toilet scenes and skin pustules. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michelle Williams don't disappoint, and now and then a line of dialog lands squarely, but at its core Synecdoche NY is a dreary aping of Fellini's "8 1/2," with characters that wandered in from a Woody Allen movie.

Because his grand debut as an auteur is such an abysmal failure, both an artistic disaster and a box office bomb ($4.5 million globally), I almost feel sorry for Kaufman. Almost. I'll let another reviewer explain why: "The message behind this waste of time of a motion picture was not to waste your precious life analysing your misfortunes. I wasted two hours of my life watching a highly analytical movie that was effectively telling me not to waste my time because analysis is fruitless."

What a trip. You can't expect a conventional picture from Charlie Kaufman, but this was super weird! So weird that half the people left the theatre before the end, either confused or offended by what they saw. Poor Charlie witnessed the whole scene and I suspect it really got to him.

The film's very much Spike Jonze in style, but grander and more ambitious than Malkovich and Adaptation. The first hour is hilarious, next half an hour is still good and you're struggling not to lose threads, the last half an hour gets really messy and tends to drag a bit. It might be due to Charlie's inexperience as a director, or it might be intentional and a means to express one of the points of the film (futility and dragging of time), or the topics simply grew too difficult to deal with, but it seems to me that the last part could have been made a bit more compact for a stronger impression. Seven to ten minutes less would have helped, if that was possible.

Perhaps Jonze would have done a better job in terms of pacing and craftsmanship, but the content is still really strong. The film had been five years in the making and you can feel the issues that Kaufman wanted to address brimming over. Illness, death, transience, love, relationships, passion, devotion, art, theatre, identity, hope, so many topics dealt with in a painfully sincere way. You both laugh and get emotionally affected all the time along with being confused by the twists of the plot and the grotesqueness of the imagery. You get many 'this is so true' moments that you completely identify with and then you suddenly get struck by a completely surreal scene. The film certainly reinforced my impression of Kaufman as a bastard son of Woody Allen and Tom Stoppard.

The cast is wonderful. Philip Seymour Hoffman has to be singled out for his magnificent performance. I have never been much of a fan of his and I was somewhat bothered by the idea of him as a lead in the next Kaufman movie. I didn't think he had a presence for that, but did he prove me wrong! Appearing in virtually every scene, the man has carried this film on his shoulders. He has created a completely lovable and ludicrous character and conveyed Kaufman's ideas splendidly.

Catherine Keener is as fun and adorable as ever! As a fan, I was really overwhelmed by this experience. I saw it two nights in a row, and spent hours discussing it with friends. The film is a bit difficult to comprehend instantaneously and Kaufman himself insists it requires a second watching. It is an amazing picture, rarely thought-provoking, and I can't wait to see it for the third time.

"Synecdoche, New York" feels like the work of a man gripped by fear, grief, and a sense that time is running out. The most ambitious of Charlie Kaufman's movies by a long shot, it is also the bleakest. Though Kaufman's work has always had a streak of comic miserablism running through it, his earlier movies are so creative and original that you feel invigorated by watching them. They're consistently delightful, and in the case of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," even profound.

"Synecdoche, New York" certainly aspires to profundity, but it's lost the sense of delight. It follows its protagonist, theater director Caden Cotard, for about forty years of "one bad thing after another." The only good thing that happens to him--he wins a MacArthur Genius Grant--turns out to be a curse in disguise, as he feels he must prove himself worthy of the grant, and spends the rest of his life conceiving and rehearsing a massive theater piece that never opens. Rather than engaging with life, he becomes lost in the world that he has created, building an exact replica of New York City inside a New York warehouse. The last part of the movie is a blur of deaths and funerals both real and re-enacted.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the best sad-sack actor working today, plays Caden. He gives a fearless performance, but he's maybe too passive in the role--not displaying enough of the mad-genius ambition that propels Caden to create such a huge work of art. Catherine Keener, who was so sparky and vibrant in "Being John Malkovich", plays Caden's first wife as a glum-faced shrew with awful hair.

Brightening things up a bit is Samantha Morton, giving a very charming performance as the guileless box-office girl Hazel. And in a brilliant bit of doubling, Emily Watson plays the actress who plays Hazel in the play-within-the-movie. Hope Davis, in a small role as Caden's therapist, seems to have wandered in from another, less dour Kaufman movie--she'd fit in with the mad scientists of "Eternal Sunshine."

For me, the scene that encapsulates "Synecdoche, New York" shows Caden working on his magnum opus late at night. He has hired thousands of actors and now needs to tell them what their roles are, so he writes short scenarios on pieces of paper and distributes them to his cast the next morning. As the camera pans over the slips of paper, which cover the floor of the warehouse as far as the eye can see, we note that every scenario is sad and depressing: "You were raped last night." "You just lost your job." Thousands of papers, and not a happy one in the bunch.

If the movie took a skeptical attitude toward Caden's belief that only unhappy situations can make for great art, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it. But because the movie, instead, reinforces the idea that depression = genius and genius = depression, my entire belief system rebels against it. People have called "Synecdoche, New York" a profound commentary on the life of artists--but if being an artist was always like that, who would ever choose to become one?

One could see parallels between Kaufman's life and his protagonist's: like Caden, Kaufman has won a coveted honor, and his first project after winning is deliberately big and ambitious. In my opinion, Kaufman richly deserved his Oscar for the "Eternal Sunshine" screenplay. But he won't deserve any more Oscars if he spends the rest of his life self-consciously trying to make Great Art, at the expense of the light and witty touch that is the reason we came to love him in the first place.

In a fit of pretentious grad-school psychobabble I once sarcastically meta-critiqued a fellows students sculpture as being a "simulation of a simulacra" Now looking back at it... I don't think I knew what I was talking about, or why having crafted a "simulation of a simulacra" would have been a bad thing?

After seeing synecdoche new york, I think I now have a tangible example for that expression... and this film is going down as one of my all time favorites! Kaufman & Hoffman are perfect doppelgangers! They certainly complement each other better than Jim Carry, Nicolas Cage or John Malcovich did. Kaufman has illustrated his self-reflexive neurosis in a dark comedic way that has more angst and gravitas than Woody Allen or Michel Gondry. The film was so existential and dark I swear I wanted to cry at the end but was too perplexed. He portrays his life as a play within a play and has created actors to play him self and others to play those playing himself, like a hall of mirrors. There are moments that become so interwoven that even Borges & Baudrillard would have a hard time keeping track of the characters. In certain respects the film reminded me of Shane Carruth's 2004 film Primer, in which the protagonist has multiplied himself into a stupor that he needed to write his own short term crib-notes to figure out what to do next. If you haven't yet seen it .. run don't walk.

One of the movies Synecdoche brought to mind for me was Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" in which two different actresses play the same character with no explanation of any sort offered within the narrative.

It's always refreshing to me to see events in movies occur without the writer/director/actors seeming to feel any need to "explain it" to the viewer. As with (m)any other filmmakers who are genuinely engaged with film as a unique art form, it seems quite clear to me at least that Kaufman requires the spectator to meet him on his own wavelength.

This is what a significant portion of artists in any medium do: they take the constraints, conventions, and materials of their chosen form very seriously and explore their own perceptions, ideas, and emotions plying the tools of their medium on their own personal terms.

At the opposite end of this artistic spectrum is the sort of pandering manipulation of a Spielberg or the painter Thomas Kincaid. Their works are only "personal" in the sense that what is most prominently on display in their work is their own desperate personal need to have their intended message "understood" (and even experienced) by all spectators in exactly the same way, so that "the artist" can in turn feel his own personal worth has been validated by public and critical responses - "Hah, I must be a great artist, because I succeeded in making you think and feel the exact thing I wanted you to!"

I'll grant that this "spectrum" is a very broad one, and I won't discount the work of anyone along it, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy things I see as technically accomplished hackwork. I don't, and never will.

I'll take an artist who refuses to telegraph his "statement" to me any day. I prefer works that wash over me, entrance me, and lead me down paths to new or long-buried thoughts and feelings.

I feel GREAT after having seen Synecdoche this evening. I laughed, I cried, and I see the world just a little differently now. I feel like a group of people I have never met (Kaufman and the others involved in making this wonderful movie) shared something with me that was very important to them. I wish I could thank them, because I think it takes a great deal of courage to share with others things that are so personally important in such an honest, unapologetic way.

I think it also takes a lot of courage for investors to throw millions of dollars at such a personal vision. It gives me hope for humanity that such a thing is possible.

The Day the Earth Stood Still gave me a tiny little glimmer of this sort of hope last weekend. But that movie was like a vending machine bag of chips compared to the full-course-meal of Synecdoche New York.

I wouldn't go so far as to call Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" one of the greatest movies of its decade, but its intellectual profundity makes it one of the most impressive pieces of work. This story of a theater director whose life is unraveling has so many layers that it's hard to describe. An obvious point is that the movie goes to great lengths to blur fiction and reality, as the protagonist's play begins to look more and more like real life.

An important point is that time progresses throughout the movie without the characters stating it, or background objects showing it. The protagonist is shown aging, as is his daughter, while he expands his model city. Interestingly, the warehouse is impossibly large, while his ex-wife's art gets smaller over the course of the movie.

Key to the movie is Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance. He plays Caden as a man at the end of his emotional rope, just like Willy Loman (whom Caden plays early on). It's too bad that Hoffman isn't with us anymore. I have no doubt that he would still be playing great roles were he alive today.

Plenty of outstanding support comes from the rest of the cast. Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Dianne Wiest, and the rest of them show themselves to be some of the finest performers of our era.

Basically, any film buff owes it to himself/herself to see this movie.

It is very difficult to conceive of a movie much more complex than synecdoche. Yet, oddly, I have no desire to see it again just so that I might resolve something. Not because I disliked it, but because so many scenes were indelibly imprinted within my mind such that I "get it". That is, I "get it" as much as can be expected. My first impression as the movie started was that "dialogue" was the entertainment. Actually, for this reason (i.e., dialogue), I would see this movie again. However, because the dialogue heightened my awareness of the same, it became easily perceptible when dialogue began to yield its place to various "prop devices" as the centerpiece of entertainment. I'm not necessarily using the phrase "prop devices" as disapproval because we sometimes present ourselves as silly when we, for example, indicate that such and such should not exist or should be replaced by such and such. In many cases, we would have then simply created "another movie". In this case, maybe we should make our own movie. That's when some of us would realize just how difficult it is to actually make one of these things. Some of the devices (literary or cinematographic) used by Kaufman were stunning or spectacular! For example, the "voice" of Adele's (Cotard's wife played by Catherine Keener) miniature paintings, and the paintings themselves, were used to great effect. The creation of a "New York within New York" presents very interesting and creative cinematography. The work (make-up, costume, and lighting) performed to create the illusion of aging characters is also very well done. And while the seemingly non-stop, nested twists and turns might make one dizzy, it is just this unexpected variety that provided a journey instead of just another movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to deliver. I found his performance to be communicative and almost accessible to the touch, as one is almost unaware that he is acting. This gives us the feeling that we know him. We then become comfortable with him, and finally empathetic.

This movie comes at you in layers of interwoven humanness. Every message invited the audience to think about themselves, their families, their lives, their legacy, their meaning, and their relationships. Caden Cotard (main character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was chronically, and strangely ill. There was a scene where Cotard, after receiving permission from his wife Adele, urinated in a sink while his wife and young daughter were both present in the room (present, but not watching). His urine appeared to be mostly blood yet he offered no reaction at all and simply carried on as if the absurd had become the expected. His sickness seemed to symbolize the loneliness that is concomitant with the very individuality necessary in order to qualify as an autonomous human being. If we die alone, are we in fact alone? Of course, this movie is about much more than that. No doubt, most of the criticism of this movie will be that it is far too ambitious. But what do we want? Do we want movies that only fit within our conventional range of pace, dialogue, boundaries, and cinematography? It seems that conventional movies will continue to appear with great frequency so, they will be readily available, but movies like Synecdoche are rare. Nevertheless, there were quite a few things that I did not like. While Phillip Seymour Hoffman very convincingly depicted the kind of leg tremors that might be caused by neuropathy, I found his enactment of a seizure to be so unconvincing that I actually laughed aloud. Interestingly enough, there was a gentleman one row up and about 10 seats to my right, who clearly did not like my idea of "funny". – Although one got the strong impression that the gentleman expected everyone within 200 feet of him to "synchronize" with his idea of good comedic timing, as he outscored us all with his use of laughter aloud -- And that is one of the effects of the complexity of this film; that is, though this film might be easily regarded as "despairing", there were many funny moments where laughter erupted even while surrounded by loss and brokenness; just like real life. Sometimes, though, brilliance might not be brilliance; sometimes it just might be simple depravity disguised as something intellectual and modern. For example, while I love Tom Noonan's work in most everything he does, I did not like Kaufman's wording of his character's pitch to play Cotard. – Obviously, this "play" is not a real play, but a montage of a construct that represents the mind, fears, and philosophies of Cotard. While I would prefer dialogue that allows for the existence of things like intellectualism, the intelligentsia, modernity, and the avant-garde without requirement for homosexual references, don't mistake my preference for a suggestion that anything should be changed in this movie. Since Cotard was not homosexual, parts of the movie seem to suggest it par for the course that all men somehow contend with homosexuality. This is not true. This is the movie that Charlie Kaufman wanted to make. No one can say that it should be anything other than what it is. I doubt that any of us will agree on much regarding this movie, as we don't agree on much regarding life.

It's not like Charlie Kaufman has written just great scripts in the past, with Human Nature and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but I had hoped that, when directing his own script for the first time, he would be able to make the definitive Kaufmanesque artwork. Alas, maybe he needs the structure of another director to rein in his mad ideas. Or perhaps, like Human Nature and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Synecdoche, New York is just a misstep. It's not terrible or anything (and neither are his two other lesser films that I've already mentioned twice), but it just doesn't work. The movie involves a play director (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who gets a genius grant. Always having put on the plays of others, he now decides to write his own play, about his own, miserable life. Not just one part of his life, but his whole life, from birth to death, encompassing every daily event. Soon the play is about a director putting on a play about a director putting on a play. The idea is fascinating. Unfortunately, the execution is poor. Like Adaptation, Synecdoche comes from Charlie Kaufman's inner insecurities. This one is completely internal, and doesn't take place in any recognizable reality. There are bald symbols at every corner, like a house that is perpetually in flames. Kaufman rarely gives any real clues about these symbols, which leads to them being analyzed and then just dismissed as self-indulgence. Kaufman never gave me an in with the picture, so I just never cared about what was going on. And much of the time, Kaufman's sense of humor is lacking. Some of the more jokey material, like the arrogant, self-promoting psychologist played by Hope Davis, gets dropped as the film progresses, right about the time it's becoming pretty funny. I did start to like the movie better when it was dealing with the multi-layered universe Hoffman had put himself in. That mind-bending stuff is quite entertaining.

Philip Seymour Hoffman. An actor par-excellence, who tragically passed away four months back at the age of 46, had a career of only ups, in my opinion. Be it a cameo, a supporting part, or even being a leading-man, Hoffman never failed to astonish us, with his sheer brilliance as an actor. And in 'Synecdoche, New York', Hoffman delivers a tour-de-force performance as a man in search of life. Hoffman dominates the show with a sterling act!

'Synecdoche, New York' Synopsis: A theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

'Synecdoche, New York', written & directed by the magnificent Charlie Kaufman, is tale of life. It has everything. Happiness. Sadness. Struggle. Love. Hate. Jealously. Loss. Death. The protagonist, Caden Cotard, played by Hoffman, experiences every emotion a human-being goes through. Its eventually a tragic story of a man's struggle of dealing with life, but the impact it leaves on its viewer, is tremendous.

Kaufman''s Screenplay is saddening, but moving & memorable, as well. Kaufman's Direction, on the other-hand, is simplistic. Cinematography is excellent. Editing is just right. Art Design is fabulous. Make-Up is perfect.

Besides Hoffman, its Samantha Morton, who stands out with a terrific performance. Her scenes with Hoffman, are simply brilliant.

On the whole, 'Synecdoche, New York' is an effort that cannot be missed! And for Hoffman, Rest In Peace. You Will Always Be Missed!

Early on in the movie Synechdoche, New York a play director creates a production of Death of a Salesman, and his hook is that Willie Loman should be played by a young man who THINKS he is old, and therefore it adds a new irony to his self-destruction in the end. What then follows in the movie is two hours of writer/director Charlie Kaufman exploring what it means to live, love, age and die -- all from a perspective that would make Willie Loman blush with ineptitude.

Kaufman is a young man who clearly thinks like an old man with many regrets. He lays himself bare here, and what we see is a man who is deeply insecure, paranoid in the extreme, with severe hypochondria, and an irrepressible death wish. To say that the protagonist of this film (played eerily by Philip Seymour Kaufman whose own internal demons would destroy him in similar fashion to the character he plays here) is not a guy who knew how to extract any fun out of living would be an understatement.

The film explores a lot of heavy themes: human sexuality and how it interferes with everything we do, infidelity and betrayal, the purpose of life, our inability to escape from playing roles in order to satisfy societal norms (along with the confusion it causes). It's very heady stuff. Most of all, the film is about suffering and dying. Kaufman does not hold back one bit in terms of showing us his fears in that regard, and he lays bare his conviction that there is no meaning in the end.

If this film sounds like a depressing bummer, you would be right. My advice is not to see it if you do not like such films. Also, do not see it if you hate films that have very little in the way of narrative, linearity, or even coherence. You will find none of that here. It is a jumbled mess of a movie that communicates directly through symbols and emotion, and plays like a dream (or nightmare).

I am sure there must be many interpretations of this movie out there. Did he die from the plumbing mishap in the first third of the movie and then the rest of it is his death dream? I think you could interpret it that way. But it really doesn't matter. This is a movie that must be processed emotionally. The left brain needs to be parked in the corner when you watch it. Nothing will make sense.

I found this movie haunting, but uneven. It is worth the voyage mostly because Kaufman's work is always worth the voyage, in the same way that listening to a song by Bob Dylan is always worth the voyage. Every one of the works may not be up to the standards of the masterpieces, but they all have something that reveals the brilliant mind of a unique artist.

That is true of this movie, even if Kaufman's mind is a place only the insane might wish to inhabit.

This film would be a big hit on death row. The justice system would be in favor of screening this film as a form of alternative punishment and the convicted would probably welcome watching this film as it would be comforting to know that the punishment of death can't be much worse. This might be the biggest dumpster fire of a movie I've seen in recent memory. This felt like an annoying fever dream that I couldn't wake up from. How does one fumble a cast this strong? What an absolute waste of talent. I don't think I can say one positive thing about this film. How is this rated as high as it is?