Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is a Talmudicly dense mediation on what it is to live life. Philip Seymour Hoffman is Caden Cotard, a hypochondriac, obsessive and romantically self defeating New York state theater director, who spends the last 40 years of his life working on a never-to-be completed autobiographical stage play, conducted inside a near life-sized replica of New York City housed in a massive warehouse. Incredibly cast the film has so many riches of performance, writing, subtext and set design that I dare not even start. Surface it to say that this movie comes about as close as I’ve seen to being a religious document on screen. Grade: A+