Screen Grab: Synecdoche, New York

If you're not a New Yoiker – nor, indeed, a rhetorician – there's a fair chance you won't split your sides at the pun in the title of Charlie Kaufman's (pictured) new film Synecdoche, New York. The writer behind the famously tricksy Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has now applied his multi-layered approach to his directorial debut, released today Stateside.

As good Greek scholars will surely know, synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to refer to the whole. Kaufman's film pivots on this device, not least in the metaphor of its leading man, Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a dying theatre director who is building a replica of New York City as the set for his latest play.

The title is also a play on Schenectady, NY, the ninth largest city in the state, where the film takes place. Quite a lot to unpick here, then – and that's just the title sequence. If in doubt, just nod sagely and say "chaos" and "meta" a lot.

'Synecdoche, New York' screens at the London Film Festival on 28 October