Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves, 1968)

A director (William Greaves) attempts to film an audition piece in Central Park, while another crew films the film, and a third films the park.

I do not know why I bothered with the plot synopsis. 

One could classify Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One as cinema verite, but the omnipresent camera - and Greaves’ editing of the footage - is slyer than that easy label.

The movie starts with the initial attempt at an audition, cut together between different sets of actors.

The reveal of different cameras recording the scene and the crew recording the scene.  

Greaves himself plays the director as befuddled and inarticulate. 

According to what I have read, Greaves was unhappy with the production, believing that he had not created the conditions for a more complex and piercing piece. And then the crew presented him with the footage they had filmed on their own.

What Greaves did not realise at the time was that the crew had started filming themselves discussing Greaves and the project.

The crew are young filmmakers and have an awareness of film theory, which gives their conversation an added layer of meta-textuality as they discuss concepts that the film is wrestling with.

Graves cuts these discussions into the film, further increasing the film’s layers of self awareness.

The repetition of the audition, and the processes around it, draws attention to both the extreme artifice of ‘acting’, and the ways in which performance informs every aspect of the world around the central production.

The film is filled with cutaways of people becoming aware of being recorded. Part of the film’s impact comes from these moments and the way they are compiled to create a constant sense of surveillance.

Some of these moments are familiar - people, whether on the production or bystanders, ham for the camera, or become self-conscious. 

There is something timeless about these reactions - these moments made me think of two things - the early movies of the 1890s and 1900s, like the Lumiere Bros’ factory, and the way people perform on social media. 

Scenes are allowed to play out from multiple angles but before you can become immersed, the film adopts a split screen format to show the same scene from different angles.

He increases this sense of disruption and self-awareness by cutting away to the crew’s BTS discussions, creating more ironic juxtapositions and punchlines.

While we get various voices discussing the film and unpacking it’s potential meanings, the one voice we never hear is Greaves as himself. Everyone else is shown in medis res, between ignorance and awareness of the camera.

Greaves himself is the one person onscreen who never shows his hand.

The film feels like a mischievous joke - at the crew’s and the viewer’s expense.

The film’s final scene is worth watching the movie by itself - Greaves and his crew are confronted by a man living in the park. With his diction and theatrical deamenour, he is like the film’s intention come to life - both an over-cooked example of presenting a public face, and completely real.

In an era where we record every element of our lives, the line between private and public, artifice and authenticity, what is considered real and what is considered true, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One feels even more prescient. 

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