Synecdoche, New York (2008)

While not the most enjoyable film you'll ever watch, it will be one of the most provocative ones. Screenwriter extraordinaire, Charlie Kaufman tries his hand at directing.

Caden Cotard (even the name is pretentious) is a tenured writer/director at a New York playhouse. As his health and relationships begin to fall apart, Caden decides to step it up a notch and produce a play that will truly represent what he his going through. He has a life size sets of everything in his life and everyone he knows becomes a character in the play. The actors ad lib after briefings with the director and cumbersome character studies. Soon the actors are such a huge part of Caden's life that they need actors to represent them in the play and the story looks like when you point a video camera at a television screen that you are sending the video signal to.

I was left with a strong sense of futility at trying to define life rather than living it. I was left with a lot more, but I'd rather you watched the movie and told me what you found.

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