Schizo-screenwriter makes his directorial debut (Charlie Kaufman)

I have no God damn clue what this movie is actually about. It seems to be the breakdown of a playwright (Philip Seymour Hoffman) dying of some rare disease. He’s trying to document and capture it in his play, but since this is a Charlie Kaufman (“Adaptation”, “Eternal Sunshine...”) story, there are other layers at work, like a movie-within-a-movie happening. Characters become other characters, like in David Lynch’s “Lost Highway”, and sub-plots don’t unfold, they just play out to confuse you for the sake of this movies four-dimensional hysteria. It IS entertaining though, and if anything, extremely thought-provoking. Like a Jackson Pollack painting that comes clearer the more you stare at it, I think Charlie Kaufman was going for the same experience. Complex movies of this kind are never good on the first viewing. I would assume, that the events that occur are based on real-life events in Kaufman’s life. Dealing with death and disease can become devastatingly hallucinogenic. I think that’s what Kaufman is trying to mesh together- the mix of reality, and surreality when one is hit with an incurable existence. “Synecdoche, New York” (it’s spelled like the linguistic term for simultaneous understanding, not the town upstate NY) has been critically bashed for being too long and non-sensical. If you can relate to the character, you’ll fall into the plot enough to survive Kaufman’s cinematic explorations. But honestly, this is not like the past few films he's worked on. This is serous-minded, literary filmmaking for the Quentin Tarantino video-store- collector types. And if you don’t enjoy the movie, I bet you won’t stop thinking about it! Putting together pieces of a puzzle, is much like studying the work of this unconventional filmmaker. So for all those who are sick of the same regurgitated story-plots, this is the movie for you.