Synecdoche, New York

Intellectually playful from its clever title forward, Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut returns to the obsessive themes and oddball humor of his scripts for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but without a lightening touch from Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry, the proceedings turn rather lugubrious. There’s lots of dark cerebral humor, but the film inevitably ends with the word, “Die.” So being inside Charlie’s head for two hours might be a tad glum, except for the life generated by an exceptional cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a morose, hypochondriac playwright-director from Schenectady, whose artist wife (Catherine Keener) leaves him, taking their daughter, for whom he pines throughout the film. As a consolation, he wins a MacArthur genius grant, which allows him to move to NYC and obtain a huge warehouse where he mounts an insanely elaborate theatrical recreation of his life. He marries the actress who plays his wife (Michelle Williams) and has a surrogate daughter, but cannot recreate the happiness he probably never had. Along the way he dallies with a hot-to-trot box office cashier (Samantha Morton) -- so hot she lives in a house surreally on fire for decades -- who in the course of the years becomes his directorial assistant, whose character winds up being played by Emily Watson in the unending, if never opening, play within the film. Got that? Probably not on the first go, you won’t. And that’s not all, you’ll see Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Jason Leigh and other familiar faces as well. There’s a lot going on here, not all of it fun but most of it bleakly farcical and mind-bending. Even with the aftertaste of ashes, this is my cup of tea. (2008, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-67.)