(Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" opens in limited
release this weekend, so here's our Cannes review from last
May.)  By James Rocchi   The directorial debut of screenwriter
Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Adaptation), Synecdoche, New York is a sprawling, messy work of
inspired brilliance and real humanity, a film that enthralls and
affects even as it infuriates and confounds. Kaufman gives us
parts, and the whole; he gives us the general and the specific.
The plot is, on the surface, about a theater director, Caden
(Phillip Seymour Hoffman), whose work, and life, in upstate New
York have both fallen into a state of stasis relieved only by
hints of slow decay. His marriage to Adele (Catherine Keener) is
a qualified success: somewhat supportive, somewhat loving,
somewhat successful, sustained in part by their daughter Olive
(Sadie Goldstein). And just as Caden's life falls apart
personally -- Adele, a painter, takes Olive to Berlin for a
gallery showing and never comes back -- h