Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

After reading the handful of IMDb reviews, I believe the ongoing debate about how well Greaves executed his directorial vision is justified. I do like that I still wonder how much was planned and how much was impromptu. However, I'm not convinced the film makes a point.

What was so much fun for me is Patricia Gilbert's performance. In the beginning of her "screen test", I found her mesmerizing. She's angry, she's loud, she's enraged. Ironically, in a different "screen test", she downplays it, even lamenting when not filming that she thought she'd over-acted prior.

I was surprised by Susan Anspach's appearance. I recognized her from Five Easy Pieces with Nicholson, as well as other projects. It was a welcomed delight.

Although I will be watching this again when given the opportunity, I won't seek it out. I also don't recommend it for those looking for your typical, Hollywood send-up. It's for cinema addicts who enjoy experimental fare.

I AM IN SHOCK!!!

After my first viewing, I was in shock! After some reflection, I really didn't feel one viewing was enough to write a review, so I watched the Special Features segment on William Greaves (At one hour, almost as long as the feature itself!) and then I watched the entire movie again...Here is the comment I was going to use after just my first viewing: "Is it an extremely original concept in film-making? Yes, undoubtedly! Is it enjoyable and watchable? For me, at least, the answer to that question is 'Not so much!'

8*******" Boy, just how stupid am I, anyway? (Rhetorical question, of course!) Here I am, at 76.2 years of age, and it wasn't until yesterday that I became aware of the name William Greaves! I really can't remember the last time I could look anyone and everyone in the eye and say the words, with soulful and unabashed conviction..."GENIUS!... Pure, Unadulterated GENIUS!"

Sitting here at my computer, focusing on authoring this review, the SYMBIO-experience has inspired me to an extent unparalleled by any other film in recent years. My job now: Articulate this in a way that, in turn, will inspire you to Queue, watch and perhaps produce a review of your own. Here, perhaps the most challenging aspect of review-writing is to avoid anything resembling a spoiler. Don't read the NF Blurbs. One definitely contains a spoiler, which could easily deprive you of the joy of "Getting It" all on your own! The 2 things which stand out most in retrospect? First, the sheer simplicity of the applied concept itself is truly inspirational, in and of itself. Second, that it took a quarter of a century, after the fact, for Mr. Greaves to get a decent screening and begin to get some of the recognition he so sorely deserved for this cinematic milestone.

Couldn't help but notice that "SYMBIO" was shot in August 1968, just 3 months after the release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. What do the 2 films have in common? Well, thematically, not much, really. It's hard to imagine a person like Greaves not having seen it, so...Who knows? We could always ask him! REVISED RATING... 10**********

ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

It would be hard to put a numerical rating on this movie, as it is essentially a movie created inside out, with the `action' being performed by the `actors' as the hard nut on the inside, and the more free-flowing production process as the body of the film – this process being captured on several 35mm cameras rolling continually -- on the outside. Not to say there is nothing important about the `action,' which centers on an arguing couple in Central Park – in fact, there is a certain anarchy of purpose in the two characters' criticism of each other (using pithy, well-worn movie expressions) that mirrors a knowing anarchy in the production loosely watched over by Greaves. The film is open-ended, suggesting that the production process will continue even after the `failure' of more than one pair of actors to claim their roles for themselves. There is something about Symbiopsychotaxiplasm that suggests failure, whether it's the suspicion of the crew that Greaves lacks direction, or the sort of floundering behavior of the actors when they are not reading their lines. But that too is part of Greaves vision. Early on in the film one of the production staff laments Greaves' opacity, saying that the director tends to answer questions with very vague statements that make one wish they hadn't asked the question in the first place. It is this mysteriousness within Greaves (`what is he doing?') that gives the film its skeleton, and makes it much more than simply a Happening in the Park.

This was recommended by a reader, and I'm glad to have seen it. But that's only because I'm interested in anything that contributes to the vocabulary of folding or self-reference. But I would not recommend this to you as a film experience. It is a clever idea: film acting students in Central Park doing a screen test. The lines they play with are capriciously malleable. Meanwhile a camera documents the events behind the first camera. There's sometimes a third camera as well, and from time to time that camera focuses on a discussion of the crew. They're discussing — with amazing vacuity — the advanced implications of the film.

In other words it is explicitly self-referential in the simplest of ways. There are many more clever folds in the film world, and certainly from that period, so this isn't rare or even novel. It would be something to recommend if all this relatively sophomoric enlightenment had been turned to something that had blood and muscle of some kind.

But it hasn't. Its one tool in a collection of several that have to be applied to the real building material of life. It lacks any of that and isn't a particularly sharp tool at that.

Perhaps Part 2 1/2 will be worth it.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

It's simple.

It's a documentary (or is it?) about people trying to film a scene, and the people filming the scene are themselves being filmed, and Miles Davis is playing consistently in the background, and there's interludes where people talk behind the scenes about the nature of the film they're both in and making - including whether they're actually acting or not, and whether anyone will see the film, and how things may or may not be edited - and all the while, everyone has to deal with various interruptions as well as general existential dread and confusion, and then a very interesting homeless man (or is he?) hijacks the film and it then ends, and then there's an apparent part 2 made almost four decades later.

I might've missed something.

Like I said... simple.