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Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is a strange creature. William Greaves, known until this film (and largely thereafter) mostly as a documentarian of Civil Rights issues filmed this strange blend of fiction and documentary in 1968.
Shot completely in New York's Central Park, the action focuses upon a supposed screen-test for a film called Off the Cliff. Two actors playing "Fred" and "Alice" repeatedly run through ten minutes or so of the most stilted domestic-squabble dialogue ever written. One camera more or less focuses on the actors. A second shoots the shooting of the film, including Greaves and the actors. A third focuses on the crew as well as whatever else is going on in the park that the cameraman finds interesting, including rowers and permit-seeking New York City mounted policemen. Edited together with a ferocious , gleeful genius, the result is something the likes of which I have never seen before.
The repetative, stilted performances of the actors (neither of whom are any good at all) gives the film a sort of minimalist structure that recalls the music of Alvin Lucier or Steve Reich, as well as rendering the (supposedly) verite interactions of the crew, Greaves, and the actors outside of the script far richer. The viewer finds hirself unable to escape the feeling that these people can act.
If you accept their word, at one point during the filming, the crew started meeting after the days shoots to discuss what it was that they thought they were doing. They debate whether or not Greaves knows what he's doing. Is there going to be any narrative? Why is the script so stilted? Why is he using such bad actors? Is Greaves himself acting for the supposedly documentary camera? Is he standing right outside the door of the room where this supposedly clandestine critique is going on, directing the crew, who are now actors?
If you haven't seen this film yet, please, get on your bikes and do something about it. Barbelithers seem to love these shells-of-reality headgames, and this is one of the best explorations of those areas that I have ever come across. |
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