Intellectually ambitious but frustratingly inaccessible, Synecdoche, New York is one of those thought-provoking films that just slowly drifted away out of my grasp. Instead of connecting and relating myself to the heavy despair and bleakness of the film, I felt even more alienated from what Charlie Kaufman is trying to say.

It's supposed to be a messy, difficult art form with a moving, heartbreaking personal story, but it only ended up being a messy, difficult art form to me. Philip Seymour Hoffman's layered performance definitely made the experience more human-like, but the entire endeavor is an unintelligible abstraction.