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Plot synopsis
Fletcher Munson spends his day procrastinating in a small office cubicle
where he works for the corporation founded by renowned self-help guru T.
Azimuth Schwitters, founder of a movement called Eventualism. When one
of his co-workers suddenly drops dead at a drugstore, Fletcher finds
himself with a promotion -- and the responsibility of crafting a very
important speech for Shwitters himself. He uses his new added work
stress as an excuse for acting emotionally distant towards his wife,
which is why it's no surprise when it turns out his wife is having an
affair. What's weird is that the guy she's involved with? He looks
exactly like Fletcher, or maybe he is Fletcher, except his name's
Jeffrey Korchek, and he's a jogging-suit-sporting, Musak-loving dentist.
When Mrs. Munson finally gets the guts to leave Fletcher for Jeffrey,
however, the womanizing dentist informs her that he's just met someone
else. He calls her Attractive Woman #2, and she looks exactly like
Fletcher's wife. Meanwhile, there's a nutso externimator named Elmo
Oxygen who runs around town seducing all the housewives with his own
particular brand of crazy-speak. Elmo strings together adjectives and
nouns that you recognize as stemming from the English language, but in a
way that conforms to no known rules of grammatical structure. It's
apparently irresistible to all womankind. But when two strangers
approach him one day with a proposition for a mysterious and important
new gig, Elmo finds a new mission for his life.
Review
Trying to summarize Schizopolis' plot is a little like trying to
explain your dreams to people: you start off totally excited about it
and as you go along, you realize that what you're saying is both a
thoroughly accurate description of what progressed, and completely
nonsensical at the same time. The thing is, there really is a logic to Schizopolis'
world; it's just not the same logic that defines real world life. You
sort of have to let go for a little bit if you really want to understand
what's going on, to stop thinking in terms of cause and effect, and
concentrate instead on the things that come up again and again. Schizopolis
is basically divided into three acts, with each one telling the same
story from the perspective of three different characters, Fletcher, Dr.
Korchek, and Mrs. Munson. With each retelling, we get a better
understanding of what's going on, and start to see that there's a
central idea about the failings of communication that unites the movie's
many seemingly random scenes. Anyone hoping to get the sure-handed,
easy-to-swallow storytelling of Soderbergh's later movies, like Erin
Brockovich or Ocean's 11, are probably smart to steer clear
of this twitchy little film experiment. Schizopolis is
determinedly hard-to-follow, very low-budget, and self-consciously
bizarre, and if that's not your thing, it's understandable. But Schizopolis
also happens to be incredibly funny, eminently quotable, snappily-paced,
and deliriously original, all of which combine to make it the first
Soderbergh film that I've genuinely loved. Most importantly, it's just
tongue-in-cheek enough to occasionally poke fun at its own artsy pretensions.
For anyone who likes a movie that demands an open mind as much as open
eyes, Schizopolis is really a whole lot of fun. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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