THE FILM

With "Synecdoche, New York," Charlie Kaufman's imaginative idiosyncrasies calcify into tiresome clichés. A sprawling elegy to death and the art of navel-gazing, Kaufman's directorial debut is a piece of performance art that drips with intangible meaning, but lacks any sort of drive that compels the viewer to invest in this punishing two hours of furious artistic masturbation. While teeming with unique visuals that challenge the audience, it has finally come to a point where if you've seen one Kaufman film, you've seen them all.

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a troubled man, confronted with the end of his marriage (the wife is played by Catherine Keener) and estrangement from his young daughter, while facing a creative roadblock reworking famous plays. The stress manifests itself through Caden's failing health; the artist finds himself consumed with his body, tuning out the rest of the world. When a sizable financial grant falls into Caden's lap, he takes up the challenge to create a massive theatrical production, assuming control of a cavernous warehouse to erect a replica of New York City, spending decades trying to perfect this mirror image of his life while hoping to elude the cruel reality of love and death.

"Synecdoche" is a purposefully indulgent piece of work that will likely induce nirvana in some viewers while boring the bejesus out of others. To the film's credit, it's a singular vision of self, monitoring Kaufman as he takes a stroll through his own dysfunction and fears, using the costume of fiction to put forth a morbid motion picture seemingly created only to tickle the filmmaker. It's not a bad thing for Kaufman to photograph his neuroses, after all, he's been banging the same drum for a decade now, using strained passes at alt-film whimsy ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Being John Malkovich," "Human Nature") to speak about the extravagance of unsettled emotions. Why should "Synecdoche" be any different? Now that he has pried directorial control away from quirky Frenchmen and skate video gurus, it's time for Kaufman to assume center stage, and if you're searching for an impossible portion of psychological sludge, "Synecdoche" is a required art-house appointment.

I was less inclined to embrace the torment, finding Caden's trail to be an endlessly circular journey fattened beyond recognition with idiosyncrasy neither enchanting nor profound. It just never sealed up as a quaking experience to me; the picture is lost in a fog of self-awareness and painfully underlined fancy that provided more excuses to stare blankly at the screen instead of mourning along with Caden as he scrutinizes his own demise, loneliness, and all sorts of adventures of introspection it takes a literal lifetime for him to confront.

While Kaufman is off playing around with bodily functions (fecal matter is practically a supporting player here), inflating breast sizes, and generally tinkering with the passage of time, "Synecdoche" wanders too far away from a claustrophobic portrait of existential angst. The wider the story gets, as Caden bends reality with his city-reconstruction play and loses his perspective while drowning in 360 degree performance, the less impactful the themes become, the final swipe of the film reduced to a mere post-it note on a banner of blaring neurosis. The cast is quite game to follow the director anywhere, with Kaufman assembling a 1927 Yankees line-up of art-house all stars (Keener, Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Tom Noonan, Hope Davis, Emily Watson, Diane Wiest, and Samantha Morton as Hazel, Caden's lifelong object of desire) to portray the eccentricities. Their efforts are appealing, just lost in the overall spectrum of quirk.

THE DVD

Visual:

Presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio), the "Synecdoche" DVD has some difficulty with black levels, which tend to run inky and take away from the image quality. Colors fare much better, bringing out on the vivid cityscape details. The inherent softness to the cinematography is not bothersome.

Audio:

What I enjoyed about the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound mix on "Synecdoche" was, expectedly, the attention to detail. The audio has a charming active quality, fixating on sound effects and the strange, non-stop musical score. Dialogue is preserved well, but is routinely outshined by the auditory minutiae, which enhances the viewing experience greatly.

Extras:

"In and Around 'Synecdoche, New York'" (18:59) takes the viewer into mind of Charlie Kaufman, interviewing cast and crew about their experience working on such a confusing, mysterious motion picture. The centerpiece of the featurette belongs to script supervisor Mary Cybulski, who was the only person in the production to retain a clear understanding of the movie -- a person even Kaufman himself would come to with questions.

"The Story of Caden Cotard" (12:09) asks Philip Seymour Hoffman to describe his character and how he embraced the filming process with Kaufman. Of course, Hoffman looks as though he's being held by gunpoint in front of the camera, but the information offered here is essential.

"Infectious Diseases in Cattle: Bloggers' Round Table" (36:37) corrals writers Glenn Kenny, Andrew Grant, Walter Chaw, Karina Longworth, and Christopher Beaubien to talk up the film with an eye towards intellectual dissection. At nearly 40 minutes, the featurette is punishing, especially when the writers (most, if not all unknown to the outside world) try to top each other in the "I get the film" department without ever speaking from the heart. The various obscure reference showdowns only invite eye rolls. This is easily the biggest waste of time on the DVD.

"Screen Animations" (4:28) showcase the dreamlike, colorful antics of "Jackal and Caden," "Gravity," and "Cow and Sheep."

"NFTS/Script Factory Masterclass with Charlie Kaufman" (27:40) brings the filmmaker onstage to field questions from an excited interviewer who covers nearly every step of Kaufman's filmography. The chance to hear Kaufman discuss his artistic development is wonderful, and it makes me wonder why he doesn't do it more often. It humanizes him greatly, which is exactly what he needs at this stage in his career.

A Theatrical Trailer has been included on the DVD.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Calling "Synecdoche, New York" pretentious is futile, as Kaufman would most likely agree with that label. I lean more toward laborious. It's a film working its way towards interpretational paradise, but the lengthy surreal asides are an endurance trial that present little in the way of appreciation. Kaufman has every right to keep making the same movie over and over, but to see him run through the routine of somber enlightenment (abyssal illumination?) is a chore. With this drifting, humdrum, stalled engine of a motion picture out of his system, Kaufman can finally alter his game and move towards more consequential routes of personal exploration.