Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

Jeffrey Anderson called it “a puzzle without an answer.” Wade Major referred to it as a “veritable fairytale,” and example of “far-out existentialism funneled through the lens of a camera and transported through the decades – a rare time capsule that time cannot encapsulate.” After spending some time reading reviews about Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, it seems that even the most “film literate” of reviewers shared the same confusion at the movie’s end as our class.

The film opens with an exchange that seems to have been directly referenced by the Ryan/Kellner article about the “anti-Establishment” films of the 1960s. An array of acerbic and vulgar accusations pours from the mouth of a woman, one half of a couple whose individual sexual crises have sabotaged their marriage. Amidst her suggestive remarks of homosexuality and infidelity, we learn both of the woman’s desire to conceive a child, and the man’s aloofness regarding the topic. While the content of the dialogue is intriguing enough, Greaves takes it a step further by repeating numerous times, each with a different couple (as, we later learn, is part of a screen test for the casting of the film). Patricia Ree Gilbert (as Alice) and Don Fellows (as Freddie) are ultimately the couple with which the focus of the film lies, “although not for reasons of dramatic efficiency. Overwrought acting, often unbearably melodramatic dialogue, and a too-obvious flirtation with the sensational all contribute to the steady death of a scene that grows more and more intolerable with each repetition” (Wade Major).

More interesting than the dramatic action of the scene of Greaves’ “Over the Cliff,” however, is the premise of larger picture, the experimental film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. In directing the members of his crew, Greaves instructs, “You’re in charge of the filming of the film being filmed.” Wade Major describes the nature of the film best in saying:

“Set entirely in New York's Central Park, the picture is a wild juxtaposition of footage shot by a documentary crew which has been split into two groups -- one assigned to capture a kind of improvised screen test… and the second assigned to film the doings of the first.”

Wesley Morris, writer for the Boston Globe, goes so far as to compare Greaves to the larger film icons of the genre and time (who were similarly referenced during our class discussion):

“OK, so this is a movie-within-a-movie at a time when most of the meta-cinematic action was coming from Andy Warhol and Jean-Luc Godard. But Greaves goes one better. He's doing Godard doing Cassavetes.”

The screen tests go as planned, until “unexpected” technical difficulties are encountered. In one instance, Greaves discontinues the action of the scene because one of his cameras runs out of film. In another, a police squad car enters the frame. They struggle with audio and visual problems, as well. These problems, coupled with the ambiguous nature of Greaves’ methods of direction, incite an even more enthralling element of action.

The members of the crew, who appear to have lost patience with the blind instruction of their leader, proceed to record their thoughts on the progress of their shooting. Innocently enough, they begin talking about the effectiveness of the film, and what Greaves’ intentions might be. Before long, however, it becomes an investigation into the directorial competency of Greaves, involving many comments that are less than complimentary. Interesting enough to evoke comment from the class are the diction and manner with which the crew speaks. While our class identified these rap sessions as “very of the time,” Major offers a more accurate encapsulation of the mood during these scenes of seemingly “low-tech, Woodstock-era reality television.” “In a film already saturated with the stylings and attitudes of the day, these intensely esoteric discussions, with their groovy counterculture artspeak, almost take on an air of otherworldliness.” While we, as the audience, go with the presumption that these sessions are completely unplanned and without the knowledge of Greaves (the poor production quality of said sessions are an indication of poor planning; as each “character” begins talking, it takes the boom operator a few moments to adjust to the new speaker; the result is murky audio at the onset of each speech), Morris offers interesting insight into his possible involvement: “What if Greaves knows they're talking about him and chooses to put that footage in his movie? ‘It may be the biggest put-on of all time,’ someone says. This isn't merely self-consciousness. It's engaged, in-house film criticism. Is Greaves a dictator or a kind of socialist leader? If he's the latter, is he then still the picture's author or is everyone? And if it's everyone, does that mean the project no longer means what it originally meant? This is a rare deconstructive movie that actually considers the possibility of theoretical deconstruction.” While some may wonder about Greaves’ inclusion of such unflattering opinions of him, Major cites this as a major “selling point” for the simulated authenticity of the film. As he stated in his review, it is “critical, for blurring the lines between art and artifice, truth and fiction, illusion and reality … Students of cinema history are certain to be most intrigued by the film's genre-splicing, style-defying conceits which fall squarely in line with such similarly challenging late-'60s and early-'70s milestones as ‘Easy Rider,’ ‘I Am Curious (Yellow),’ ‘Medium Cool,’ ‘Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song’ and any number of Godard efforts.”

While the fact that the film’s ambiguous nature is certain to raise confusion in its audiences (which seem to be treated as the “lab rats” of a film experiment), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm cannot be overlooked completely. In fact, had it experienced a commercial theatrical release at its time of completion, it “could have been one of the seminal film experiments of the 60s” (Major).