Schizopolis (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ann Dalrymple, Betsy Brantley, C.C. Courtney, Scott Allen (II), Silas CooperBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
Published: 2003-10-01
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Home Vision Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Schizopolis (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Viewing Prerequisites: A Working Knowledge Of Japanese And Dentistry
Summary: 5 Stars
This is far and away the most unique and original movie I have ever seen. There is no close second place. Steven Soderbergh wrote, starred in, and directed this little-known masterpiece, and I am now a loyal fan. The caution on the box perhaps best summarizes the film: "Warning: All attempts at synopsizing the film have ended in failure and hospitalization." This is truth in advertising if I have ever seen it. Think of "Schizopolis" as a narcissistic, paranoid blend of equal parts "Head," "1984," "Monty Python's Flying Circus," and "Unarius."
The film is absolutely impossible to categorize. It occurs in three principal acts, but they are all circular and the plots entangle themselves in the end in an almost Seinfeldesque manner. Steven Soderbergh stars as both Fletcher Munson and Dr. Jeffrey Korchek. Munson is a curiously self-absorbed speechwriter for New Age guru (and founder of "Eventualism") T. Azimuth Schwitters, while Korchek, a dentist with a Muzak fixation dominates act two by having an affair with Munson's disenchanted wife from act one. Throughout all this, local exterminator (and celebrity) Elmo Oxygen uses very unconventional pillow talk to seduce housewives while plotting against Schwitters. Eddie Jemison, noteworthy as "Nameless Numberhead Man," is the perfect comic foil for Munson.
Although you will need to watch this movie several times to even scratch the surface of the nuances it contains, several themes are apparent, most notably the satirical approach to contemporary society which is infused throughout the film in many ways, most notably in the dialogue. When Munson greets his wife after work he says "Generic greeting," to which she replies "Generic greeting returned." Later in the film several other dialogue issues occur with Soderbergh's characters speaking in Japanese, French, and Italian seemingly at random and to great comic effect.
From the outset, this film is highly segmented (much like an episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus") and confrontational. There is even an explicit warning in the beginning which says "If you don't understand this film, it's your fault and not ours." This type of in-your-face humor is very uncommon and I simply loved it. The film is extremely difficult to follow if you are approaching it like a conventional movie with a well developed plot and characters, but if you can deal with the exceptional stream-of-consciousness, non sequitur humor that Soderbergh uses here, "Schizopolis" will become one of your favorites, too.
I highly recommend this film.
Summary of Schizopolis (The Criterion Collection)
Fletcher Munson has a doppelgänger in dentist Dr. Jeffrey Korchek. In his only starring performance to date, acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean?s Eleven) inhabits both roles: Munson, onanistic corporate drone and speechwriter for New Age guru T. Azimuth Schwitters, and the swinging Korchek, Muzak enthusiast and lover to Munson?s disenchanted wife. Meanwhile, mad exterminator and part-time celebrity prima donna Elmo Oxygen seduces local housewives in secret code and plots against Schwitters. Placing the onus squarely on the viewer ("If you don?t understand this film, it?s your fault and not ours"), writer/director/editor/cameraman Soderbergh presents a deranged comedy of confused identity, doublespeak, and white-knuckled corporate intrigue, confirming his status as one of America?s most daring and unpredictable filmmakers.Both a kind of home movie and a salute to the hip, pop-up sketch comedy of 1960s-early 1970s television--Laugh-In, Monty Python's Flying Circus, that sort of thing--Schizopolis is a hit-and-miss series of dada gags with vaguely connecting threads of Kafkaesque paranoia. Soderbergh himself stars as two people--one an ineffective dentist, the other a speechwriter for a cult movement called Eventualism, which has set out to "question all answers"--connected by their romances with the same woman, played by Soderbergh's real-life ex, Betsy Bramley. There isn't so much a story as a series of bits in which these characters often (though not necessarily) turn up, from press conferences on the subject of horse urination to old footage of nudists to a scene of an Eventualist exchange between husband and wife: "Generic greeting!" "Generic greeting returned!" None of this leads to a literal point, but after a while an undercurrent of disease about making sense of the modern world becomes apparent beneath the jokes. Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape, Out of Sight) is certainly a filmmaker who goes his own way in life, always hitting his target in one spot or another and occasionally getting a bull's-eye for his trouble. Schizopolis is no bull's-eye, and it has just as many detractors as admirers, but it's impossible not to appreciate Soderbergh's conviction that making a film out on the fringes is a worthy endeavor. --Tom Keogh
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