Fear of the Unknown: On The Endless (2017)

I personally did not see the appeal in The Endless. I think most people walked out of class that day very intrigued by the film, but I honestly found it quite dragging, and I felt that a lot of the elements were just thrown together for the sake of being “mysterious and edgy.” Here’s why I felt that way:

I think it was easy for me to get lost (in a bad way) in the film because the way it was presented was so dry and dull. It was hard for me to keep up because the color grading of the entire film was just different shades of brown, green, and gray, so it was easy for my eyes to just gloss over each of the scenes, and it was easy for me to space out entirely. Almost all of the characters were Caucasian, too, with the exceptions of Lizzy and Anna. I get that the lack of diversity is supposed to add to the whole cultish nature of the film and to make it more eerie, but I guess that, when coupled with the grim color scheme of the film, it’s hard to find a character that stands out.

It’s already difficult to find a character that stands out, let alone a character you might actually like, because I didn’t find any of the characters’ personalities especially pleasing. Everyone just seemed really dumb at one point of the movie, but maybe that’s just because I generally don’t like horror films. Most characters in most horror films seem to have thrown logic out the window entirely, and you’re left with a bunch of people who got themselves stuck in a sticky situation they wouldn’t have to deal with in the first place if any of them had a smidgen of common sense. If Justin was reluctant about visiting the camp but Aaron recalls it wasn’t as bad as Justin thought it was, then wouldn’t it have been best to modify Pascal’s wager a little bit, and to play it safe and assume the camp was a death cult? Even when they did get to the camp, there were so many signs that the camp was bad news—that impossible equation Hal was working on, that odd game of tug-of-war, the monster at the bottom of the lake, the increasing number of moons, the fact that no one in the camp remembers sending the tape, the crazy time loops. And yet, despite all of that, Aaron still tried to persuade Justin to stay in the camp. It’s almost like having to persuade your friend to stop going back to their toxic serial cheater of an ex-boyfriend—literally what merits are you seeing in this camp? I think the reason why I felt the whole thing was just “mysterious and edgy” was because I felt that a lot of the things they did weren’t really grounded in any stable, sensible, and believable motivations.

I won’t discredit the fact that the more technical aspects of the film were pretty impressive, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy the film’s story. The editing used in the film was relatively realistic (what constitutes as a “realistic” special effect for a supernatural film, anyway), and I almost felt as if I were stuck in all the time loops myself. The cinematography was also very smooth, especially in the scenes where they would pan over the entire camp in overhead shots. While I feel that they could have done a better job in crafting the story behind the film, they did a pretty good job on piecing the technical parts together.

I don’t think I’d recommend The Endless to a friend, or give it another watch. I think it has the potential to serve as a good gateway film to the broad roster of horror in cinema, but maybe it just isn’t for me.

Stick to the script: On Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Sir prefaced the film that day with the disclaimer that if we didn’t like Repo Man, we probably wouldn’t like Sorry to Bother You. I guess I could see why he said that, as they’re both insanely odd stories with different quirks all over the place. While I wasn’t a big fan of Repo Man, I felt that Sorry to Bother You was an out-of-this-world experience. Here’s what stood out to me:

There were many bits and pieces that served as social commentary. Choosing a black person to be the central character of the story was a grand choice in itself, as it allowed both stereotypes and contradictions to that stereotype to thrive in different parts of the story. You have the black man desperate for a job and desperate for money, but he’s also the guy who gets promoted to be a Power Caller. The whole “white voice” motif speaks volumes about racial discrimination in general, and having the black actors sort of “lip sync” and have recordings of white actors edited onto the scenes give off a very disconcerting and disconnected kind of feel. All the scenes with Steve Lift were oozing with luxury—and accompanied with vices of all sorts, of course—sex, drugs, what have you. Power Callers literally sell slave labor. While everything about the film is so strange, there’s no part of the movie that isn’t totally removed from reality.

It was also a very colorful film, both literally and figuratively. The production design was very clean-cut, and the dramatic lighting in several scenes really set the mood for whatever was happening. In the first scene, the light during Cash’s interview at the RegalView office was bright yellow, and as soon as he stepped out of the office and into the cubicles, everything was toned with a grim blue. The lighting in Steve Lift’s place was also always eerily, dimly lit, especially during the orgy, and the camera was slowly zooming in on Cash just sitting at the other end of the hall. The fact that the film focuses on such a seemingly mundane job—telemarketing—provides a weird juxtaposition next to all the other absurdities in the movie.

The plot twist about the equisapiens was something no one ever saw coming, and I don’t think anyone could’ve guessed that outcome correctly. I admit that it gave me the same vibe as the aliens subplot in Repo Man, in the same way they’re both starkly out of place, and they both make you wonder where the hell that idea came from, and think about how executives and directors sat down at a table and thought this was a good idea. What I liked more about the equisapiens was that it was only uncovered later on in the film, and it wasn’t initially established as a central point of the story, the way that the aliens in Repo Man were revealed in the first five minutes of the film. The horses didn’t keep us on our toes the whole film because they weren’t revealed when the film started. Rather, it was more of the mysteries behind the life of a Power Caller that kept us interested, and it was only until later on in the film where more and more things were starting to show themselves, where they introduced the odd plot twist of the equisapiens. Because this wasn’t revealed right away, the weirdness only showed itself to the viewers when they were already invested. To introduce a plot point this weird too early in the movie won’t give you the same buildup, and may scare away more close-minded viewers, leaving you with a very niche audience.

Sorry to Bother You was an insane film, but it managed to make all the crazy parts work, anyway. I don’t think a lot of films have the liberty to combine this many weird elements into one work, and the ability to make it make sense. While Sorry to Bother You may (quite funnily) bother some viewers, once you get past how bizarre everything is, you might actually find yourself hooked—you might not know what exactly it is about the movie that has you reeled in, but you go along with it anyway.

Living on my knees: On Repo Man (1984)

I’m not going to sugarcoat or beat around the bush—I did not like Repo Man. I’m not sure if it’s an acquired taste or if it gets better the next few times you watch it, but it didn’t particularly amaze me when I watched it the first time around. While I recognize it has its merits here and there, this was the first film from this class which I generally disliked, and I was disappointed that it had to be the film I was assigned to for group reports. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but these are my two cents on the film:

None of the characters were very appealing to me, and some of them even felt like mere plot devices. I didn’t really feel any sort of connection to Otto, even though he had his own share of ups and downs. Otto wasn’t really presented as a character with much ambition, apart from the fact that he badly needed the money. He didn’t come across as someone who had solid values, as it seemed easy for him to shrug things off and to give things up. I felt that part of Miller’s monologues/dialogues were for the sole purpose of adding more details to the narrative, up to the point it felt like he was used for lazy storytelling. The scene where Miller was explaining what UFOs were like was very boringly executed, and it seemed like a cop out for the film’s producers to avoid the whole “show, don’t tell” thing. I felt that Leila was nothing more than a filler, and an object of Otto’s affection (or thirst). I didn’t feel a connection with any of the characters, let alone sympathize or empathize with them.

I personally felt that the entire subplot of the aliens in the Chevy Malibu didn’t mesh well with all the other plot points in the film. If it was supposed to come off as a good kind of weird and quirky, I didn’t get that at all. I felt it was trying too hard to be weird, and everything just felt out of place. I felt that if they had gotten rid of the alien subplot entirely, and maybe replaced it with something else (literally) closer to home, it would have been more relatable or accessible. What I did like about the alien subplot, however, is that while they chose to go with a subject that’s totally (and again, literally) out of this world, they just went all the way with its special effects, too. While the purposefully tacky effects were a result of budget restraints, I admire that they just decided to own it, and to accompany such an unbelievable subplot with far-from-realistic effects. I also liked how they juxtaposed the aliens subplot with all the generic products in the same film, because you put one extraordinary element alongside something so common, and these are two things you wouldn’t normally decide to put together. Despite how far apart they are from one another on the spectrum of mundane and totally weird things, they both complement each other in making the film feel incredibly absurd. It’s like an unlikely couple that make things work out—you would have never seen it coming, but it seems to make sense, anyway.

If there was anything interesting about the movie, it’d be the dialogue. As mentioned earlier, I did feel like certain bits of the dialogue were only placed in the script for the sake of lazy storytelling, but outside of those incidents, some of the lines were pretty clever. This was especially evident in several scenes where they alluded to the recurring theme of televangelism (or Christianity in general). Bud says he dislikes both Christians and commies, and they later juxtapose Bud’s escape from the hospital with Jesus’ resurrection, when they find an empty hospital bed, with the television blaring, “He is risen!” in the background. Apart from all the Christianity-related quotes, I especially liked that one line where Bud says “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees”, and I still think about what it means until today.

While I don’t think I’d exactly rave about Repo Man to my friends, I think the film still has its strong points here and there. It’s also possible that many other viewers would see the good in the same film that I didn’t necessarily catch when I watched it. Reflecting on what Repo Man was about, and how the film’s plot unfolded, reminded me that you never really leave discussions on different films—there’s always so much more to learn from each other, from every viewer.

Stroke me like the rain: On Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Velvet Goldmine is nothing short of gaudy, extravagant, and over-the-top. Glam rock isn’t something you can bullshit, and Velvet Goldmine did not disappoint. The way Brian Slade’s life was presented was so intricate, eloquent, and well-thought-out. There are so many elements of the film that bring out different sides of me—the journalist, the communication major, the philosophy enthusiast. Despite this, I can say all parts of me thoroughly enjoyed the film. Here’s what I loved about the film’s storytelling:

The film’s choice to narrate Brian Slade’s life in the form of flashbacks experienced by journalist Arthur Stuart’s interviewees was crucial to the way the narrative progressed. This gave way for the “headliner-worthy story” perspective on the whole phenomena that is Brian’s life, his staged death, all the works. However, while Arthur was also very immersed in the whole glam rock scene, I personally felt the way the narrative was presented detached Arthur from the rest of the storyline, and that his character wasn’t fleshed out enough. Arthur felt more like a mere plot device, rather than a character with a story of his own. My journalist self tells me it’s because he needs to remain impartial, and that he shouldn’t color his story with his own emotions. However, my communication major self says I wish the film had unpacked his character more.

This also brings in the question of whether Brian Slade is real or not, and who he really is. This is going to sound very philosophical in nature, because the film is always told in first person, just by different people, based on whoever Arthur is interviewing—and because of this, we only get glimpses of how different people viewed Brian. We never see Brian from a totally objective point of view, or Brian from his point of view. We only see how he came across to several characters. We see all of his outward actions, and how these are interpreted by other people. As Levinasian as this sounds, we only see how other people make sense of the other that is Brian Slade. We only see these imposed understandings of him, and there’s this whole other side of Brian that is never explicitly presented—the raw, genuine, human side of him. We only see him as a mere memory, and as Bertrand Russell states, our senses are highly fallible. We all know these interpretations of Brian, no matter how valid—because, of course, we’re all entitled to our own feelings and opinions—can be incredibly flawed and inaccurate. My journalist self would also state that there’s no such thing as completely unbiased news. I guess there’s no way we could find out who Brian Slade really truly is, we only see him for how we want to see him. And I guess this has its own merits. It’s quite paradoxical that we never truly get to know who Brian really is, despite him being the focus of the film. That very sense of mystery is what keeps the film going.

In line with all the interviewees, it’s only logical that Arthur would interview people closest to Brian, which means you’d be listening to stories of the very few people who see Brian as more than just a rock star. You hear from Cecil, who knows what Brian was like when he was just starting out as a rising star. You hear from Mandy, who’s seen Brian at his lowest and most vulnerable. This is interesting because most people only see rock stars like some sort of god, like a higher, ethereal being. But these dark sides of Brian are what reminds us that he, too, is human like us. Sure, he’s presented in such a way that we don’t get to know who he truly is, but we do know that he’s hurt people, and that he wasn’t as perfect as most people thought he was. And maybe that’s human enough for us.

The production design of the film was excellent—there were so many crazy costumes, hair and makeup looks, and set designs. The frequent interspersion of musical numbers even made it feel like a two-hour long music video, which makes the movie really stay true to its glam rock focus. I think the very vibrant presentation of the movie through its production design, with all the glitz and glamour, presents an exceptional juxtaposition when coupled with the complicated subject matter. Not everything that glitters is gold, and this very juxtaposition only highlights the very artificiality that comes with being a rock star. We never really know who Brian is beyond the flashy looks.

There are so many layers to Velvet Goldmine, and the film’s gorgeous and elaborate storytelling is sure to captivate anyone who sees it. Velvet Goldmine definitely makes my list on the most enthralling films of all time, and I can only hope to tell stories as great as this one day.

Down the road: On My Own Private Idaho (1991)

I admit I had a hard time keeping up with My Own Private Idaho. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I found the film overall pretty inaccessible and difficult to digest. By all means, this might have been caused by the fact I was unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, the jarring flow of the film’s dialogue, and the fact I had to read up a bit more on the movie before I could really process what happened. Despite that, here’s what I was able to get out of the film:

It was only recently when I discovered there was an entire genre on road films, where the main characters go on a road trip that happens to offer them a new perspective on their current situations, and that possibly changes their lives for the better. My Own Private Idaho is a tragic take on the genre entirely, because while the main characters do go on a trip to search for Mike’s mother, they never meet the goals they initially set for themselves. Not only do they never find Mike’s mother, but Mike’s best friend Scott meets Carmella along the way, and while he had initially promised to accompany Mike along the way, Scott ditches Mike altogether once he falls in love.

It’s also interesting to see how the film portrays the stark difference between love and sex, and how it manages to show how the two intertwine. For instance, Scott and Carmella hook up, and fall in love afterwards—which admittedly gave me the impression that their relationship didn’t exactly have that stable of a foundation to begin with. Both Mike and Scott prostitute themselves, and while Mike is shown to be homosexual, Scott clearly states he only sleeps with men for money. This is exactly what makes Mike’s confession of love so heart-wrenching, especially when he states, “I could love someone even if I, you know, wasn’t paid for it. I love you, and you don’t pay me.”

I also thought about Mike’s narcolepsy as a plot device, and started to think about how significant his narcoleptic episodes were in driving the narrative. The film opens just as Mike’s about to get a narcoleptic episode, and we already see bits and pieces of his mother, which foreshadow his desire to look for her. When Mike is about to sleep with a woman, he falls asleep immediately, and it’s explained that his episodes are typically triggered by stress. Most importantly, almost every time we see Mike suffer a narcoleptic episode, it is usually followed by a scene of Scott taking care of Mike until he wakes up. This is exactly what makes the scenes where Scott isn’t there to take care of Mike more heartbreaking and distressing. The first few emotions I felt after this series of scenes was empathy and understanding—it’s hard not to fall in love with someone if he’s always the person you wake up to after you suffer these episodes. It’s hard not to look for that person the next time you have an episode once you’ve grown so used to having him take care of you. When the film closes with Mike getting another episode, he falls asleep in the middle of a road, in the middle of nowhere—and what better way is there to symbolize loneliness, and the bitter reality that what once was is no longer?

My Own Private Idaho was one of those movies that I had to really revisit in order to pinpoint what really stood out to me as a viewer. I’m sure there’s a lot of points I might have missed, and I still need to flesh these out with other people to see which elements they found interesting in the same film. I think there’s still a lot more I have to unpack, maybe later down the road, and I’m looking forward to it.

Inconvenience in store: On Futureless Things (2014)

Futureless Things was nothing short of quirky and absurd. It’s the kind of film where the elements are so clearly delineated from one another, so it’s easy to pick apart. Despite this, it’s also one of the only films I know that’s easy to unpack, but difficult to piece back together. The film has so many things you can work with, but at the same time, there are so many ways you can connect everything together, and so many ways you can interpret the film. Here’s my take:

The film first presents itself like any regular film, with an established setting, established characters, and a seemingly regular narrative that we think we can keep up with. I can’t speak for everybody who’s seen the film, but I expected I’d be following the same two characters throughout the rest of the film. When the film jumped to the next set of characters, I got a bit unsettled. I then realized it’s not the characters that we had to follow throughout the film, and then I think that maybe there’s a recurring theme we’re supposed to get as the film progresses.

Employees go in and out of the store during their shifts, and because the film switches from character to character so often, the events seem to present themselves in several vignettes. The genres of the vignettes and the storylines vary drastically—you have your standard romantic subplots between employees (of the same gender!), you witness discrimination and harassment towards people of different nationalities, you have this strange and fantastical subplot where characters have odd supernatural abilities, and you have this subplot where things take an unexpected dark, morbid turn.

Because the film seems to initially present these subplots as separate, my brain wired myself to take everything in as such. However, bits and pieces started presenting themselves in the different vignettes that allude to previous vignettes. We get a sneak peek of the lesbian subplot before it is presented to us in full, and we later see certain scenes being replayed from the perspective of surveillance cameras. Audio recordings from when one employee was trying to learn English are replayed in a later vignette, and everything ends with a singular employee laying out the IDs of all the employees that were featured throughout the film. These references left me with more questions, which admittedly inconvenienced me for a bit, as I tried to rack my brain for what these could all possibly mean. Until now, I still don’t really know what they’re supposed to mean. I didn’t realize I was going to come out of the film with so many things I was unsure of.

Later on, we realize the only constant thing throughout the film is the convenience store, and the fact that everything takes place within that store was the only thing I was sure of. The film thoroughly plays around with the concept of space, and how all the events, relationships, and conflicts that came out of the movie all point back to that same space. This may drive audiences to think, how differently would the story have turned out if it weren’t set in a convenience store? What if it were set in a slightly bigger but similar setting, like a grocery store? Would it have been less intimate? Or what if it was a different store altogether? What if it were your average retail store that sold clothes, or maybe a bookstore? If it were a comic book store, would employees encounter pretentious smartasses more often? If it were a sex shop, would the employees be more prone to getting harassed by customers? The possibilities are endless.

I think the main selling factor of Futureless Things is its capacity to spark meaningful conversation, all the while remaining a very entertaining film. Although I’m left with a lot of questions that were left unanswered, I figure it might be the kind of film I need to re-watch over and over until I finally get it. Or maybe it’s one of those films that I’ll never fully understand, no matter how many times I watch it. Despite everything, I could say Futureless Things comfortably unsettled me—it left me with many things that were left unresolved, but I think that’s exactly where its merits lie.

Going straight and choosing life: On Trainspotting (1996)

There are way too many things going on in Trainspotting. I needed more than a full week to really process the film, and I admittedly didn’t know how to start this reflection for the longest time. One thing I processed immediately, however, was that Trainspotting easily earned its spot on my personal list of movies everyone needs to see in their lifetime.

And the reasons?

There are way too many reasons, because there’s a lot to unpack in Trainspotting. The film has so many themes and elements—substance abuse, peer pressure, the complexity of both romantic and platonic relationships, debt, withdrawal, and so on—it’s likely that different viewers will find different merits in the same movie. Here are some of the themes and motifs that stuck out to me the most:

When I talked to a friend about the film, she said she thoroughly enjoyed Trainspotting because it was “everything she wasn’t.” Thinking about it now, I do resonate with my friend’s statement as well—I like to think I’m a relatively clean person, never having done any sort of drug, and I stay away from trouble for the most part. I think most people see me as the type of go-getter Renton talks about in his opening monologue, choosing life, a job, the fucking big television.

It also made me think about how, when we were younger, anything British was associated with class and sophistication. Every character with a British accent in all the children’s movies was always so prim and proper, and spic and span. The way Trainspotting presented Edinburgh seemed to contradict everything we were taught about the United Kingdom when we were younger. Everything was dirty, gritty, and raw. I felt that this was a more genuine and honest portrayal of the United Kingdom, showing us all the ugly bits. Everything was so new to me, and I loved it.

The scene where Renton suffers from withdrawal, and is haunted by all the people he’s affected throughout his affair with heroin—Sick Boy’s baby who died; Spud, who was jailed while he was set free; Tommy, who was impeccably clean before he introduced him to heroin; Diane, an underage schoolgirl he had slept with—was executed eerily well. There’s so much to talk about when it comes to just that scene.

I found the scene haunting for two reasons—first, all the elements placed together made it feel as if I were carrying Renton’s guilt. I immediately wanted all the people who’ve ever done me wrong to suffer through a sequence like this of their own, where my ghost haunts them about all the stupid things they’ve done to hurt me. Second, it only reaffirmed how trying to quit vices is very much like a double-edged sword. There’s a certain kind of desire for something you know is destructive, but it’s not like its destructiveness gets rid of the desire at all. As Taylor Swift so eloquently puts it, “Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it.”

Lastly, we have the theme of “closure”, so to speak—every film that has a standard narrative is bound to end and finish somewhere. When the film closed with “Born Slippy” playing in the background, with Renton silently leaving with the bag full of money, my jaw was dropped the entire time. Using similar monologues for both the opening and closing scenes, while it sounds cheesy and cliché in theory, took me totally by surprise in the best way. Trainspotting’s ending is one of my favorite movie endings of all time, no contest.

There are so many layers to that ending. We had that debate we had in class about whether or not Renton was “choosing life” because he really wanted to, or because he felt like it was something he only ought to do. I like to think Renton legitimately wanted to be a better person, or to be “just like us”, no matter how creepy that idea sounds. There’s also that bit where Renton admits he tries to justify him leaving with the money in all sorts of ways, but he owns up to the fact that he “ripped them off.” When you take it at face value—he ditched his friends and stole the money—I guess you could say he did do a terrible thing, but when you consider the circumstances of his situation and ask other important questions, you might think twice.

I could go on and on about what I loved about Trainspotting, but I remain firm in my belief that different people will find different merits in the film. There’s only so much I can dissect from the film, and I’m sure other people will see things that I might have missed. I maintain that everyone needs to see Trainspotting at least once in their life, and maybe then can we start to get by and look ahead until the day we die.

Surpassing expectations: On Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla was the first Godzilla movie I’ve ever seen. I didn’t really have any expectations for my first Godzilla experience, and I didn’t really know what a typical Godzilla movie tackled. You could say I had more questions than expectations—Does the whole movie center on a random monster that comes to wreak havoc on a random metropolitan area? Do we just follow the city’s government thinking of different ways to take the monster down? Does the movie just end with the monster dying? Is that really all there is to Godzilla movies?

(To answer my last question: Shin Godzilla was more than just that.)

The first thing that struck me about Shin Godzilla was the film’s incredible production value. As a former COM124 student, I’ve had my fair share of frustrating moments with camera movements and cinematography. There were so many scenes where the camera moved so swiftly and smoothly, and scenes that were so cleanly shot in one go, with no cuts whatsoever. Scenes where different characters were passing the laptop to one another were also very well-coordinated, and I’m sure perfecting these scenes took a lot of practice and rigor.

Apart from the film’s cinematography, the film’s CGI was seamless, and felt incredibly lifelike. Godzilla’s powers and transformations shown throughout the film made me jump in my own seat, even if I knew in the back of my head that none of this was real. It was clear the film’s producers invested a lot of money into special effects, in order to make the film as realistic as possible. Films like this usually leave me thinking about all the creative work the filmmakers did for all the graphics, but Shin Godzilla made me suspend my disbelief immediately, without even thinking about it.

The second thing I grew to appreciate about Shin Godzilla was its worldbuilding. I’m also absolutely in love with everything about Japan, and I can confidently say it’s my number one happy place, after having visited Tokyo and Osaka. Shin Godzilla managed to preserve Tokyo’s cultural identity while successfully intertwining it with the fictional components behind Godzilla, and the city’s different strategies to exterminate the monster. They managed to include scenes of Tokyo’s busy streets and subways, while adding a little science fiction twist to them.

Additionally, I will admit that, because I had very few expectations, I underestimated the complexity of the film altogether. I found myself spacing out during the scenes where different government officials and other characters were discussing the science behind all their strategies. Despite not being able to understand the finer, confusing details, I was able to appreciate how well-thought-out the story was. Each of the government’s battle plans were backed up by empirical data and research, and the writers of the film even managed to insert a little side story on a possible romance sparking between two characters.

I do, however, have a tendency to make wise-guy remarks when watching action films—although I do my best to stop myself—because they tend to be very unrealistic. I generally approach the whole “disaster movie” with a sarcastic attitude, because the protagonists claim to have “saved the city” from a certain threat by inflicting more property damage than the actual threat would if it were never eradicated. However, with all the technical and creative storytelling elements in Shin Godzilla, it was easy for me to set my skepticism aside for entertainment’s sake—and I was not disappointed.

Overall, Shin Godzilla served as a great gateway to the vast world of Godzilla movies. In spite of all my apprehensions, I’m more than willing to give other Godzilla films a shot.

General reflection, genuine bewilderment: On Schizopolis (1996)

I can confidently say I came out of class that day with more questions than answers.

Steven Soderbergh, dressed in a dull, standard suit, walks onstage and leans over to the microphone to introduce viewers to Schizopolis. He mutters the following disclaimer: “In the event that you find certain ideas or sequences confusing, please bear in mind that this is your fault, not ours.”

As soon as we started streaming Schizopolis, I psyched myself to try to make sense out of everything. I prepared myself to put two and two together in order to find the deeper meaning behind all the flashy props and experimental sequences. I can’t say I was successful in making sense out of the film, however, despite all my sincere attempts.

I am sure of approximately three things: the film is divided into three acts, Fletcher Munson (portrayed by Soderbergh) and his wife are in an unhappy marriage, and Elmo Oxygen is trying to seduce as many housewives as possible. Everything else, I am unsure of. I walked out of class with several questions—what exactly is Eventualism? What exactly does Munson do for a living? Was Munson somehow reincarnated into Dr. Jeffrey Korchek’s body in an alternate universe, or are they just doppelgangers of each other? Is Munson’s wife actually cheating on him with Korchek if they’re technically the same person? Is Korchek even real? For that matter, is Munson real, or is any of this real?

As deliberately confusing as Schizopolis makes itself out to be, I could compartmentalize the different elements of the film into themes and motifs. Schizopolis plays around with language and dialogue in several ways, and in different scenes. The sequences of Munson and his unfaithful wife are played over and over again with different dialogues, but the essence of the sequence remains the same all throughout the movie—the first time we see the sequences, Munson and his wife speak in placeholders; the second time we see the sequences, they converse as people in real life normally would; the third time, Munson speaks in Japanese. Later on in the film, we even see an additional scene that was not shown the first three times the sequence was replayed, which shows what happens after Munson’s wife leaves Korchek. She meets up with Munson—or Korchek, or another man played by Soderbergh—who then speaks in French. It’s amazing how I got the general idea of their unhappy marriage from the first time the sequence was played, and how they decided to replay the same sequence with different dialogues showed viewers how you can tell the same story no matter how much you play with the language.

This is also seen in majority of the scenes with Elmo Oxygen, where he converses with housewives in a strange language using code words such as “smell sign” and “nose army”. The film never explicitly tells you what each code word means in English, but with context clues, I could get the general idea that “smell sign” at least meant “goodbye” or something similar, and that they were flirting with each other.

Another thing I appreciated about the film is that while the methods used to tell the story were crazy and experimental, if you remove a few elements here and there, the subject matter can be rather mundane. You follow the life of an average white man in an unhappy marriage with a mediocre job. On a surface level, most people wouldn’t watch a movie with this premise, but what makes the film interesting and what keeps viewers reeled in is the storytelling. I didn’t really understand where the film was taking me, but I wanted to see it through regardless.

After giving myself some time to reflect on the events in the film, I eventually gave up on trying to understand it, and took everything in the way it was being presented. Maybe I’m not supposed to understand it. Maybe I’m just supposed to enjoy the film for what it was, without trying to search for any deeper meaning. Is there even a deeper meaning? Why am I so busy trying to figure out what things really meant, if I enjoyed—or at the very least, was intrigued by—the film, anyway?

I am sure of approximately four things: the film is divided into three acts, Fletcher Munson and his wife are in an unhappy marriage, Elmo Oxygen is trying to seduce as many housewives as possible, and I found several ideas and sequences confusing. But that’s probably my fault, and not anyone else’s.