Schizopolis

Fletcher Munson works at a company. It is the headquarters of a movement built on personal development and he is charged with writing the founder's speeches. At home he talks with his wife, but what they say are not words; each states the function of a sentence instead of the sentence. Then the film moves to a second man: the dentist Jeffrey Korchek, identical to Munson, who is seeing his wife. Then the film tells the same events a third time, now from the woman's side, and in that section the men speak in foreign languages. Steven Soderbergh wrote, directed, photographed and played both leads. The film dates from 1997. It was made with his own money and a very small crew; the director had moved away from large productions at the time. Betsy Brantley plays the wife; she was Soderbergh's former wife, and that was tied directly to the film's narrative. The form is split; the same events repeat from different views and no version corrects another. The matter it treats is the uselessness of communication, and the narrative shows that directly through a game with language. At the opening the director walks on to introduce the film himself and tells the audience to watch it again if they do not understand. It found almost no audience on release and became a cult film later. Who it is for: anyone curious about experimental comedy and the whole of Soderbergh's work. Who it is not for: the narrative is deliberately closed, the structure loose, and the humour very cold.