“Hell is other people at breakfast.” Nobody knows the full Sartre quote better
than Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman). A theater director living in Schenectady, New York, he wakes up on an autumn day to find that everyone and everything has suddenly gone wrong. Despite his production of “Death of A Salesman” being a success, his painter wife Adele (Catherine Keener) leaves him to go to Berlin with her wicked friend Maria and their daughter. Meanwhile, he has an affair with a lady who works at the box office (Samantha Morton), but the fire goes out almost instantly.

In response, Cotard decides to use his Macarthur fellowship to “do something important” while he’s “still here.” He attempts to put on a play in a fantastically large warehouse, wherein he hopes to create a duplicate of New York with thousands of actors. The outcome is a film that resonates despite its immensely convoluted style.

Those familiar with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s previous work won’t be surprised by the oblique symbolism and surreal style at play here. But “Synecdoche” is riddled with a bleakness and despair that you won’t find in “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” One of its central preoccupations is mortality. “It’s a big decision how one prefers to die,” says a character in the film, the underlying message being that said decision determines nothing less than how one lives.

Cotard lives between delusion and reality, surrounded by an odd array of doctors, actors, lovers and doppelgangers. Kaufman pours every bit of his own lonely, restless, fearful soul into his main protagonist. Along the way he delves into Borgesian reflections on the nature of time and being. A profound and infinite solitude and angst pervade the film from the very start, when Caden hears a woman on the radio quoting Rilke, “Whoever is alone will stay alone.” Harsh, perhaps, but truthful.

4/5 Stars by Penny Zhou.

USA. Written and Directed by Charlie Kaufman. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton
Category IIB. 124 minutes