Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, a comedy drama, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, a frustrated theatre director so bound up in his own work and failings he almost doesn't notice his wife Adele leaving him.
When an unexpected grant of $500,000 allows him to realise his dream; he rents a cavernous warehouse and sets about rehearsing a play based on his life and the world around him, with sets modelled on New York and a script comprising of gnomic post-it notes. But will the play ever reach its first night?
Kaufman's film is an almost Bergmanesque meditation on life and death which, as with his scripts for Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, refuses to kowtow to convention but by its very subversion, provides a fascinating, challenging viewing experience.
Synecdoche, New York is a Film programme that first aired in 2008 and has been classified a 15 certificate.
