Way back in the prolific filmography Steven Soderbergh (whose latest film, Unsane<\/i>, is out on DVD this week), there\u2019s the tiny Schizopolis<\/i>\u00a0(1996), his hilarious, endlessly creative mental breakdown of a vanity project. Full of ideas and self-amusement, It\u2019s best imagined as Soderbergh\u2019s sketch comedy show, as projected straight from his brain. The movie has no beginning or end credits, it\u2019s bookended by Soderbergh saying that it’s your fault if you don’t get it, and it wants nothing more than to be a whopping art-house fart. In his first and only leading role, Soderbergh stars in Schizopolis <\/i>as two people. First, there\u2019s Fletcher Munson, a corporate drone who is hired to write a speech for a guru named T. Azimuth Schwitters and his religion, Eventualism. He\u2019s married and has a child with a woman (Betsy Brantley, his ex-wife in real life), who we later find out is having an affair with her dentist, the tracksuit-weaning Dr. Korchek (also played by Soderbergh, in aviator glasses). The very basic nature of the plot concerns Fletcher\u2019s dull existence, his fraying marriage as expressed through dialogue that speaks purely subtextually (\u201cGeneric greeting,\u201d he says when he comes home; \u201cGeneric greeting returned,\u201d she replies), and his goal of writing the speech (\u201cIt should contain nothing that can be confirmed \u2026 or denied,\u201d his boss instructs him with a stern face). But Schizopolis<\/i> has even more on its mind, cutting between different narrative strands that involve a sleazy, casanova-level bug exterminator (David Jensen) who speaks in gibberish to women he seduces (\u201cArsenal. Nose army\u201d he says before boning a housewife), a couple that follow him around in a regular van as if commenting on the viewer\u2019s impression of him, an educated spokesperson for the movie who seems to not be in on the joke, and various news reports that are like Onion <\/i>stories. <\/span><\/p>\n For a movie as thoroughly and elusively ironic as Schizopolis<\/i>, it\u2019s best understood through the contradictions it loves so dearly (which, by no coincidence, is how Eventualism communicates): Its themes are absurdist yet sober; the dialogue can sound like wingdings but is easy to follow; its editing is erratic but focused; it\u2019s all a big joke, and yet it could be Soderbergh\u2019s American pastoral, especially with its images of hypocritical spirituality, bleak relationships, the coded nature of language and the very act of making such a ridiculous movie. There\u2019s a lot to unpack in this story, but it would be a waste of time to overthink any of it. <\/span><\/p>\n The only thing that clearly makes sense about this film is that Soderbergh needed it; it was always meant to be a very personal project after forgotten misfires like The Underneath<\/i> and King of the Hill<\/i>. In 1996, he talked to Patricia Thomson at The Independent Film and Video Monthly<\/i> about how he was able to secure funding for the movie, but always prefaced that it wasn\u2019t for his distributors, or possibly anyone else. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to want this movie; this is just to keep me going,\u201d he quotes himself saying to Universal. Soderbergh never seemed concerned with it making money, and Schizopolis<\/i> benefited from coming at a time when filmmakers could more easily bankroll their artistic projects. Schizopolis<\/i> would pay off in a different way \u2014 it provided an artistic reboot that would lead to one of Soderbergh\u2019s most successful movies, Out of Sight<\/i>, practicing non-linear editing techniques and even a similar dry sense of humor that translated to a box office hit. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine Schizopolis<\/i> working if Soderbergh were not at the center of it. His rare presence onscreen completes the self-amusement factor of the film, as in his opening scene where he\u2019s shown masturbating at work, or making grotesque faces at the camera. But the usage of any other actor would take away the non-scripted movie\u2019s mascot, whose very presence just shows how impulsive it is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While Schizopolis<\/i> is assuredly the work of a delightfully bizarre filmmaker, it does have a heart at the center regarding its perspective on relationships. In one form Schizopolis<\/i> is the creation of a film artist processing a dead relationship by not providing it with any distance, to the point that he and Brantley each play two people, their spousal characters cheating on each other. It has a genuine comic sadness at its core not unlike other relationships seen within Soderbergh\u2019s often less sarcastic ideas of romance.<\/span><\/p>\n Influenced by the likes of director Richard Lester (who Soderbergh interviews in a book about making Schizopolis<\/i> titled Getting Away with It<\/i>), Monty Python, Looney Tunes, and probably whatever Soderbergh ate the morning of shooting, Schizopolis<\/i> functions as uniquely, delightfully dorky comedy. In particular it shows the bombastic freedom of his dry sense of humor, as in an extensive scene where Soderbergh, as Dr. Korchek, seemingly riffs on every dentist joke in the book.<\/p>\n As a movie that would have only played in independent theaters and been sought out by people looking for some kind of art, Schizopolis<\/i> can be very glib with the idea of sophistication, going for obvious metaphors and storytelling devices. One of its obvious metaphors is of a pants-less man being shown running away from people trying to catch him, wearing a T-shirt with the film\u2019s name on it. But Schizopolis<\/i> is liberated in a way that few films are. The amount to which it wants to be self-amusing becomes invigorating, especially for those who like how Soderbergh is a rascally filmmaker. An art-house movie about male strippers, as with Magic Mike<\/i>? Using an iPhone instead of a camera for Unsane?<\/i> Schizopolis<\/i> shows that he\u2019s always had that spirit, despite whatever audience or prestige his other projects may have. <\/span><\/p>\n But the miracle of this movie \u2014 aside from the fact that it wasn\u2019t just put in Soderbergh\u2019s personal collection, given its very selfish existence \u2014 is that despite its upfront denial of quality, Schizopolis <\/i>prevails as an excellent, compelling piece of entertainment. Even when working on a stream of consciousness, his storytelling instincts shine through. The movie is designed to be a fluke, or \u201ca lark,\u201d as he told interviewers. As one of his greatest films, it\u2019s anything and everything but that. <\/span><\/p>\n Way back in the prolific filmography Steven Soderbergh (whose latest film, Unsane, is out on DVD this week), there\u2019s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":536,"featured_media":9573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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