Synecdoche, New York (2008)

For 45 minutes or so, Kaufman unveils the odd but watchable tale of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theater director in Schenectady, N.Y., whose life turns darkly surreal. His wife (Catherine Keener) leaves him, taking their daughter, and he develops a degenerative illness as serious as it is vague (pustules, fading eyesight, premature aging). He's like Woody Allen trapped in a Debbie Downer nightmare. But that's the fun part. In the second half, Caden stages his life as a play, gathering a cast of actors who merge (sort of) with their roles. As they do, Caden adds more and more layers to his theatrical experiment, until he's watching himself watch the actors play characters who are observing themselves. Or something. I gave up making heads or tails of Synecdoche, New York, but I did get one message: The compulsion to stand outside of one's life and observe it to this degree isn't the mechanism of art — it's the structure of psychosis. D+