 A number of critics have compared it to Federico Fellini's 1963 film "8½".In his review in the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert said, "I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film [...] the subject of 'Synecdoche, New York' is nothing less than human life and how it works.Using a neurotic theater director from upstate New York, it encompasses every life and how it copes and fails.