Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

(On Cable TV, July 2022) While the traditional idea of a documentary is to describe, explain and clarify, writer-director William Greaves has something very different in mind with Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, a film that delights in confusing, obfuscating and challenging what should have been a simple documentary. As the film begins, we’re led to believe that we’re watching actors rehearsing a scene in New York’s Central Park. Or are we? Because soon we’re spending more time with the filmmaking crew trying to capture the scene as Greaves seems out of his depth directing the actors, as the crew openly revolts against Greaves’s incompetence. Or are we? Because soon after, the same crew starts talking about whether what they’re doing is authentic or manipulated as a fiction of its own. And then the film starts interviewing passersby. If you’re wondering what’s all happening here, you’re not just not alone—you’re behaving exactly as intended. Split-screen cinematography and non-linear editing only add to the effect. You can’t really call the result fun or clear, but it’s certainly entertaining in its own unique way. Despite a regrettably low audiovisual quality, the film provokes questions about the path from 1968 to reality TV, where such digressions from packaged reality are now commonplace. Except that this was all brand new back then. (And there’s a warning about some significant homophobia here—so much so that even I, normally not prompt to comment on such matters, took notice.)  It does take a special kind of headspace to accept Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One—you have to accept that you will never know what’s real and what isn’t, that the film will not wrap up tidily in a neat package, and that everyone can and will argue about the film. But it’s not meant to be your usual run-of-the-mill explain-the-world kind of documentary.