Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York (2008) is Charlie Kaufman's drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It marks his directing debut, with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the lead.

Theater director Caden Cotard wins a grant and starts a play with no edges: inside a vast warehouse he builds a replica of New York and hires actors to play everyone in his life, himself included. Years pass, the replica keeps growing, the rehearsal never ends. His painter wife (Catherine Keener) leaves with their daughter, box-office clerk Hazel (Samantha Morton) lives in a house that is permanently on fire, and actress Claire (Michelle Williams) becomes wife number two. Caden loses track of where the play stops and his life starts.

Kaufman, who wrote Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, built an obsessive puzzle about time, death and the impossibility of seeing yourself from outside. Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest and Hope Davis fill out the cast. The tagline reads like a verdict: the end is built into the beginning. Stream Synecdoche, New York (2008) online on iFILM.