"Synecdoche, New York": Eternal darkness of the spotty mind

If movie awards were given out for ambition, Charlie Kaufman's insanely twisted "Synecdoche, New York" would sweep every prize this year. We wouldn't expect anything less from the screenwriter of "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" — Kaufman's built a career on twisting time, language and reality into little pretzels of ink-black comedy, often brilliantly. But this film, Kaufman's first as director, is a disappointing step back. The dark comedy has become simply darkness; the twistiness here is frustratingly tangled.

Images of illness and despair (and, oddly, excrement) permeate "Synecdoche, New York," which has at its center a theater director named Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) undergoing a mysterious midlife crisis. (The offbeat title word — remember it from high school English classes? — describes a figure of speech in which a part stands for a whole or a whole for a part; it also plays off Caden's hometown of Schenectady.) Caden's bitter wife (Catherine Keener) is on the verge of leaving him; his career of staging tired classics to suburban audience bores him; his therapist (Hope Davis) scares him; his body seems to be plagued with strange illnesses; and he doesn't even notice that the theater's pretty box-office manager, Hazel (Samantha Morton), loves him.

So, eventually Caden sorts things out and finds happiness, right? No, because this is a Charlie Kaufman movie, and things never progress like you think they might. Instead, Caden decides to create a massive theater piece, hoping to discover the essence of life. He gathers a vast cast in a Manhattan warehouse, and for what seems an eternity (at least, from my seat) they re-create Caden's life and their own; a giant snowglobe in which a world imitates a world and a part becomes a whole. Reality and imagination melt together like ice cream and soda in a glass, with lines blurring and clarity fading. "I want you out of the apartment," says Caden, to his (new) real-life wife on the set. "The real one. You can keep this one."

Ultimately, it's the parts of "Synecdoche, New York" that resonate, rather than the whole. The movie is filled with rich Kaufman-esque detail: the tiny art made by the wonderfully seething Keener, which viewers need to use magnifying glasses to see; Hazel's matter-of-fact acceptance of the fact that her house is on fire (it stays that way for years, all glowing amber, while she goes on with her life); Jennifer Jason Leigh's wicked turn in a small role, all cleavage and archness; the way a fed-up actor asks, "When are we going to get an audience in here? It's been 17 years."

But there's a joylessness to the endeavor that's ultimately wearying. By the time Caden's final revelation comes, Kaufman's ploddingly directed film (drenched in crummy-looking light) has worn out its welcome. "Synecdoche, New York" builds a wall of high concept, so high you can't find the good movie hiding somewhere behind it.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com