Synecdoche, New York

With his directorial debut, Academy Award winning writer Charlie Kaufman unleashes what is bound to be his most divisive piece of cinema yet. Already a part of the pop culture lexicon with a signature style that leads many to describe films in his wake as Kaufman-esque, the first time director has much to prove and much to lose in stepping behind the camera. Long considered one of Hollywood's few true celebrity screenwriters (a household name to many, and a film's reference away to most -- "the guy who wrote Being John Malkovich" is all it would take), Kaufman takes his career even further by transitioning from unique writer into full-fledged cinema auteur whose originality of vision no longer depends on an outside director to come to life.

Maybe it is this reason that leads the dreamy and sometimes maddening Synecdoche, New York to be such a troubled gem. Without a director to filter Kaufman's screwball dialogue and complex metaphorical images, the screen becomes literally engulfed by the mad genius' ideas run wild. This is perhaps Kaufman at his purest, and therefore his craziest yet.

It is safe to say that Synecdoche, New York does not make for an easy, pleasurable viewing experience. No film has ever been less suitable for a lazy Sunday afternoon. However, no film in recent memory may be more deserving of numerous, intense viewings either. Often more satisfying as a thematic vehicle driven by a self-consciousness of film's own devices than anything approaching a coherent and compelling narrative work, Synecdoche flies off the screen and slowly descends the viewer into a false world of art and cinema in which time and space, our essential principles of comfort, cease to exist. Watching the film is an experience for the senses and dismissing it early for its eccentricity or obvious ambitiousness would be a mistake. Nonetheless, I can't say I'd be entirely stunned if many people feel compelled to do so. It's a surreal and vacant pace-setter for a good 30 minutes or so. Only when the film's real drives kick in, does the Kaufman magic really begin. And even then there's so little realistic plot to hold onto that many viewers will be understandably driven to feel they are being led down a meandering path to nowhere.

What clear plot there is goes something like this: Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is an ailing, regional theater director living a discontented life with a wife who ignores him (Catherine Keener). When she takes off for Berlin with her mysterious girlfriend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the couple's young daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein), the terribly lonely and increasingly ill Caden uses his art to fill the void in his life. After winning a mysteriously massive grant that has no apparent financial limitations, he undertakes the transformation of an old warehouse into an interactive performance piece containing hundreds of actors playing roles modeled after real people living real lives. Eventually, he takes a new wife, Claire, (Michelle Williams) and has another daughter. They too become characters in his life-size play. Claire, an actress, plays the part of herself. Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger named Sammy (Tom Noonan), who claims to have been stalking Caden for the past 20 years, is cast as Caden in Caden's play. Not too long after, another actor is cast to play Sammy playing Caden in Caden's play. And not too long after that, a second warehouse is built inside the original warehouse and this warehouse contains another life-size world replica and so on until Caden's mad, never-finished art piece becomes a world within a world within a world. And still he goes unsatisfied. He always craves his next idea for artistic development and bounces vulnerably between women, pursuing a sense of satisfaction that is sometimes present but always nothing more than fleeting. At some point, he even takes on a role within the play, that of Ellen, his first wife's cleaning woman whom we never meet in the real world. As Ellen, he shares a moment of comfort and solace with the actress playing Ellen's mother, but even then, the moment is temporary and leads only to more desires to create and self-sooth with artistic designs that he thinks might finally satisfy him but never will.

And so Synecdoche, New York unfurls. It does not grow to a boil and then settle neatly. It dawdles and shuffles its feet, carrying on in "a day in the life" mode, but this time the meaning of a "day" and exact identity of one's "life" are not clearly defined. Kaufman is fascinated by the ease with which actor's slip into other lives, attempting to create a reality by which to express reality, which already naturally expresses itself. He lets the film be unreal and reflexive, driving the audience to question its celluloid reflection as something not all too different than the world within a world Caden hopes to find peace in. Characters sometimes age but look no older (Williams, for example). Years sometimes pass in what we presume are only hours. Typical film cues for time jumps are suspended and much of the film seeks to stress the artifice of film itself as a storytelling device. One character (Samantha Morton's Hazel) lives in a house that is constantly on fire but yet never devoured by flames. Caden himself is always dying yet not dead.

There is no truth to this fiction. At least not in any rational sense. It is a tome of atmosphere and reflection that utilizes film and all its devices rather than playing by classical Hollywood rules. At times it feels stifled by its own rambling insanity, but in the clutter there is such brilliant, unparalleled imagination that it is hard not to forgive the oddity and embrace it for its unique candor. Synecdoche does not try to fool audience members into believing that what they are seeing portrays real lives with which they should sympathize. It wants you to recognize that it is false and think about what that means for you, sitting in your seat, and watching the unreal, hoping it will feel real, before departing back into reality. In a medium designed to create illusory reality, the film stands apart as an illusion about illusion, which mournfully suggests that art is nothing but one of many pleasures all humanity, equal in each part and together one singular whole, seeks out to quiet the terror it feels on the slow and painful journey toward death.

Grade: A