Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (19: Unedited)

I’ve never been one to stop watching movies after the first ten minutes, but the Criterion Collection re-release of William Greave’s 1968 documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm severely tested my patience and interest, until I realized how brilliant the film, and its creator, actually were.

It opens with a terribly scripted scene between two lovers having a fight about the husband’s sexuality, when a cut in the scene continues the dialogue with a second set of actors, and even another pair of actors continue their dialogue until the director, Greaves, interrupts the scene. The camera pulls back and reveals the entire crew, and the opening credits roll.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, tentatively titled Over the Cliff, is another movie about making movies, but in a completely unscripted and unplanned way. This lack of structure and sight of a plot point or conclusion becomes immediately apparent, and the audience soon becomes as frustrated as Greaves’ three crews; one that films the scene, one that films the crew filming the scene, and a third that films everything.

After the initial credits, Greaves asks his crews to focus, in every thing they do on set, on the sexual interpretations of an action or object, and demonstrates by looking for a woman with large breasts. This misdirection initially engages the viewer in a study of sexuality in the sixties, in which three camera crews revolve around a cliché scene that’s voiced by undirected actors.

But sex isn’t the focus of the documentary, and after the viewer realizes that Greaves is intentionally acting as a “bad director” (an accusation that comes out in an impromptu crew meeting Greaves was absent from), it becomes obvious that Greaves is subtly sabotaging and confusing the people working under him.

Why a director would willfully derail his project is a mystery, but it opens the film up to interpretation as a study of how humans behave when a type of chaos theory is unknowingly applied to them. The crew quickly realizes that this project is not just an experiment to compare the different screen tests (the short scenes the various actors are performing) and decide to film their discussions in an effort to figure out what the project is really about. These discussions, one cameraman points out, as far as the audience knows, aren’t directed by Greaves and are the result of his ambiguity when asked about the film. However, because the audience cannot say for sure that Greaves is disconnected from these scenes (although he will edit them in the end), an argument about the levels of reality and what we expect to be true emerges.

So, Greaves is asking the actors and crew, and audience, to do a lot of work. The actors are trying to perform a successful screen test so that they can be paid, and exercise their art, and the crew has its own motives for the success of the project, and therefore meet Greaves with huge amounts of frustration and complaints. The audience, used to being told what to think or shown what to believe, is almost instantly confused.

I spoke with Mr. Greaves, now almost 40 years after his project, about the various poignant moments and important concepts he addressed, and the conversation only widened the aperture of the film’s enormous topical scope. The couples’ scripted argument about abortion, “You’re killing my babies one right after the other,” reflected not only abortion itself, but the anti-Vietnam sentiment felt by much of America at the time.

The Criterion release includes Take One, the original film, and its sequel, Take 2 and a half. It also comes with a full-color booklet that includes an essay on the film by Amy Taubin, and most importantly, liner notes by Greaves for Take One. The liner notes are fascinating, and after watching the film, reveal Greaves’ motives and personal interpretations about his project, “What is the psychoanalytical significance of this piece… Is it chaos masquerading as order or order simulating chaos?”

Although I made the claim that Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is a movie about making movies, it’s open-ended concept and potential for endless repetition and interpretation shifts the film into a separate realm. This documentary, through the medium of film (including its technical problems, its ability to capture spontaneous visits from homeless people, and its ability to disconnect sight and sound) is actually about human frustration and understanding. Greaves challenges everyone around him, and that watches the film, to consider how their actions influence life and how it responds to situations, without the heavy handed metaphor and symbolism too prevalent in modern art.