Not many films have the power nor the ingenuity to make a meaningful impression in its audience to keep it from fading into obscurity. We have a great number of stories even looking at the same ones through different angles; some genres and plots have become saturated with recurring cliches recycled time and time again its hard to tell one from the other. As its said in the bible:
Ecclesiastes 1:9 King James Version (KJV)
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done: and there
is no new thing under the sun.
Though religious text and cultural analysis of media are two vastly opposite topics in the spectrum, they have one common factor and that is the critique of the human condition through any given medium. Maybe it be the movies or tv shows we watch or the trends in media and how we consume them. They all boil down to the inherent values our generation portrays.
Schizopolis is just that, a reflection of how we can view our culture and ourselves. Albeit, a reflection on a crude and dusty, old, broken mirror, smeared with in weird smelling stains bought off some swanky garage sale
But there is a reason to why it is the way it is. Contrary to popular belief, Schizopolis isn’t random and incoherent just for the hell of it but it makes a point, obscure as it maybe, an important point that it makes sure we understand even before the movie starts.
“A movie for all generations and all its people to watch and understand.”
This beginning part seems like a joke, something to build up to a punchline of sorts as the film doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. Funnily enough it does.
The film is everything yet nothing at the sametime, it incorporates every cliche it can and all sorts of plots into one amalgamation. A freak show of every possible over done trope and story everyone gobbles and ingests without a moment’s notice. One might even call this film offensive with the way it presents itself all up in your face, critiquing plots and stories with religious conspiracies, or usual porno tropes, sophisticated love stories with a dash of european to make it seem intellectual, slice of life and action dramas. All these to arrive at a conclusion.
Its all garbage.
Given though that mixing enough ingredients into a pot and you’ll achieve a vile concoction of God knows what. It doesn’t matter if you have the choicest of spices or grade A meats or the freshest of produce, the film breaks it all apart to the barest of minimum to show and present how all these tropes are absolute trash. It might seem contradictory to what I previously said about this film taking itself seriously, but a good chunk of the film makes fun of itself while trying to make its point. Almost like a circus act balancing on a tightrope of the film industry, and even more importantly the culture as a whole. Think holding a concert to raise funds to sue the top musical artists.
Honestly, none of the characters or their stories matter as so much as to play their part in critiquing their given genre, trope, or plot. One aspect of the movie shine through out of everything and its the religious group and movement: “Eventualism”.
It find it in the beginnings of the film as well as scattered parts of it randomly and eventually in the end. Though it is one of the tropes being picked apart and analyzed like the rest of the elements in the film, Eventualism as a religious movement looks at the philosophy of things happening by drawing out these events into being. Things that will happen will happen.
This is the crux of how the film presents itself and shows off how it grows and matures into the mess it is. All these things are happening because they can and they will. All possible outcomes are the outcomes that will take place. It is because it can, not because it aimlessly does so but so that it can look at what happens when it does.
And this is where the film finds structure amongst all the chaos it spew out.
Steven Soderbergh went through some cases with his previous films with committees deciding the general direction. Sources have said that this came from Soderbergh’s own pocket and his personal project. And to me this comes shining through like a big F U to the industry that has seem to pollute and recycle the same shite over and over.
To Soderbergh, the film is merely just a reflection of the insanity that is ingrained in our culture and ourselves.
Elements of Screen Arts (2019) 