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'Synecdoche, New York'

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BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

October 24, 2008

You can look it up: A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole ("wheels" for "car") or the other way around ("the law" for "policeman").

Is art a synecdoche? Is life? Those are just two of the many, many questions posed in Charlie Kaufman's intriguing mess of a film, " Synecdoche, New York." In his directorial debut, screenwriter Kaufman ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") follows an obsessive playwright, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), as he builds an enormous stage to re-create all of Manhattan. Including the stage. And the actors. And the actors playing the actors. You can see where this is going.

"Synecdoche" is another of Kaufman's Kafka-esque creations, a perverse world that exists mainly to abuse a wretched protagonist. Cotard is dying of a neurological disease, but his artist wife (Catherine Keener) couldn't care less. At any rate, he actually loves his flirtatious friend Hazel (Samantha Morton), but she's dating the actor who plays him (Tom Noonan). So Cotard sleeps with the actress who plays Hazel ( Emily Watson). Somewhere in there, he marries an actress who plays herself (Michelle Williams).

"Caden, when are we going to get an audience in here?" one stagehand asks. "It's been 17 years."

Like Cotard, Kaufman is full of ideas but doesn't know when to quit. He veers between so many characters, themes and moods (at one point, the film veers into sci-fi) that it becomes impossible to grasp his meaning. And like Cotard's play, the film wants to be about everything. This may be a fine point, but: Is that really a synecdoche?

PLOT An overambitious playwright builds a stage that replicates all of New York. Including the stage. And the stage within that.

CAST Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams

LENGTH 2:03

PLAYING AT Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Sunshine Cinema, Manhattan.

BOTTOM LINE An intriguing mess.