Synecdoche, New York

“The end is built into the beginning.”

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a theater director in Schenectady whose body keeps failing him while his marriage goes sour. When a grant lets him stage anything he wants, he rents a warehouse and builds a life-size copy of New York inside it. Charlie Kaufman's debut follows Caden through the women who come and go from that project, Hazel (Samantha Morton) and Claire (Michelle Williams) among them, each one wanting his attention.