Synecdoche, New York Review

I'm the kind of guy who has had psychiatrists tell him he overanalyzes things. In classic Libra style, I can weigh out both sides of an issue ad nauseam in my mental scales. While this kind of existential OCD has stopped me from having any successful romantic relationships, it makes me the perfect audience for Charlie Kaufman's newest script and directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. The film focuses on a stage director so focused on the minutiae of his own life that it becomes a separate world mirroring reality. Happily, the film doesn't seem to be judging its character (and by proxy, me) one way or another, but instead shows one man's struggle to free himself from the prison of his own mind, a freedom that ultimately can only come with death. So for those of us who obsess over the unanswerable questions of life on a mid-nightly basis, at least we have a movie we can turn on while we're up.