TORONTO - Film circles have been buzzing lately about the labyrinthine content and title of "Synecdoche, New York," which marks the directorial debut of Oscar-winning American screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.

At the Cannes Film Festival in May and the Toronto International Film Festival this week, many were at first asking how to pronounce "Synecdoche" and what it means. Once they saw the movie, they were racking their brains over the heavy symbolism and themes.

But Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, who stars in the film as a forlorn theatre director mounting a play about his life, says people shouldn't get too caught up in trying to figure it all out.

"People want to get it, whatever that means. They want to get it," a bearded Hoffman said while smoking a cigarette beside an open hotel room window in an interview at the Toronto festival.

"They want to understand it, they want to wrap their head around it in a way that's comfortable. Not comfortable but you know, it makes sense to them so they can kind of take it home and know that they know something, which I understand -- that's how people are, that's how I am, you know -- but Charlie's not making a film about that. Charlie's making a film about what life's like, and what life's like is not like that."

"Synecdoche (pronounced sin-NECK-duh-key), New York," which hits theatres Nov. 7, is set in Schenectady, N.Y., at the start of the film. But the title is a reference to the word "synecdoche," which is a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole, or vice versa.

Hoffman masterfully plays Caden Cotard, who endures failed relationships, constant regret and mysterious physical ailments while developing a self-centred theatre piece inside many warehouses over several decades.

Catherine Keener plays Caden's first wife; Michelle Williams co-stars as his second wife; and Samantha Morton is his sexpot lover whose house is continuously on fire. Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest are also in the cast as actors in Caden's play.

Kaufman -- known for writing fantastical screenplays for such surreal films as "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" for which he won the Oscar in 2004 -- wrote many whimsical elements into "Synecdoche, New York" that will have theatre-goers thinking for days.

Which is exactly what Hoffman is hoping for.

But ultimately, says the acclaimed actor, the film is about life -- and "life is the fact that you never actually wrap your head around anything."

"The minute you think you have, you don't. The minute you think everything's happy, it's not. The minute you think you're healthy, you're sick, and life just keeps, like, doing that and that's the madness of the film," said Hoffman, who lives in New York and won a best actor Oscar for 2006's "Capote."

"The minute you think life kind of makes sense, it really doesn't. Life's actually really odd and strange and screwed up, you know, and beautiful at the same time, and I think the film does that very well in its odd, strange, screwed up-ness. It's quite beautiful and quite moving and funny and quirky and weird. It's a very subjective tale of a person's life -- and when you get that subjective, things become really strange, and I think that's how life is."