Deeper into the Vaults

Here are a couple more from the video files. As always, links to the longer Apollo Guide reviews when they are published.

Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis (1996, USA, Steven Soderbergh)
Apollo Score: 66/100 AKA sex, lies and scientology


Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis is the director’s return to the indie-minded roots that inspired his most interesting early works, such as the Palm d’Or winning sex, lies and videotape. Schizopolis is a curious film indeed. Developed in three distinct parts, Soderbergh’s film is at once an astute study of the banality of modern life and a banal student film wrapped around a series of inside jokes. The people in Soderbergh’s world are haplessly flailing around in search of some meaning in their lives, some falling under the spell of a secular self-help Scientology-like religion called Eventualism, while others engaging in extra-marital affairs. All, however, operate at the most superficial levels and find help in the most insubstantial ways. In a move that strangely parallels David Lynch’s film Lost Highway, which was released the same year, one character finds himself inhabiting his doppelganger’s life, and in the film’s final segment the narrative disintegrates bizarrely into a replay of several scenes, only this time the dialogue is in Japanese. Or Italian. Or French. All sans subtitles. While this all sounds mighty confusing (at times, it is) and self-conscious (oh yeah), the interesting thing is that Soderbergh does manage to say some intelligent things about the insipidness of communication in contemporary life. Throughout, the film strips away the veneer of daily conversation to reveal the banality of the standard encoded communication, which is a way of interacting that is a sad reflection of the tedium and vapidity of many people’s daily lives. Dialogue is not about conveying info or communicating ideas or feelings, but rather about assuaging ourselves and soothing things over with others. What we are also looking at here is Soderbergh’s attempt, in this most post-modernist of cult films, to cultivate a trendy nerd-hipness. Very aware of the attacks that the film will face for being an act of total self-indulgence, the writer/director also deflates his screen persona by offering up several scenes of Soderbergh pleasuring himself. However, despite littering these promising and interesting notions throughout his film, what Soderbergh is most keen about here is what he is least successful at. Soderbergh attempts to make the sort of inspired anarchic comedy that marked the work of one of his heroes, Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night) as well as the irreverent skits of the lads from Monty Python. His hop-and-skip editing, (over-)reliance on non sequitur absurdity, and spirited attacks on all things mundane and middle class each have their moments, but taken as a whole, the film fails to maintain the consistent absurd tone it is aiming for. Ironically, Soderbergh’s film, which is all about the way we debase and misuse language, mostly fails at its mighty attempts to manipulate the language of film. In fact, the film evolves into a relatively recognizable narrative and Soderberght’s final conclusions seem rather tame, despite some of the daring-do we witness up on the screen.

Score: 66/100


Frida (2002, USA, Julie Taymor) AKA The Lion Queen

One of the most troubling challenges to documenting a person’s life is how to distill that life, especially one as full as that of artist Frida Kahlo, down to a two hour film. Most bio-pics scrupulously document in chronological order every significant event and every important person in the individual’s life, which often results in a film that is by necessity superficial and inherently episodic. Also, these films are regularly littered with a cameo cast of guest stars a la TV fare like The Love Boat thereby lifting us out of the moment time and time again. It’s not unlike having a cannon go off by your ear every couple of scenes. If anyone can rise above these innate genre limitations, I’d hoped it would be Julie Taymor, but while she again displays her artistic talents in the realm of production design—this is a gorgeous piece of eye candy-- with Frida, Taymor is more often than not a victim of the same self-limiting choices that have scuttled many a biographical film before her. As per the aforementioned formula, Frida skips from point to point across the surface of the life of well-known and critically lauded early 20th century Mexican feminist painter Frida Kahlo in a mostly linear fashion. Frida is presented as a strong, intense woman, committed to her philandering husband as much as her revolutionary politics, facing terrible physical challenges with determination. Perhaps most importantly, it shows how these things shaped and inspired her art, which helps explain why her incredibly personal and deeply revealing work still touches people today. Hayek and Molina have a natural chemistry in the central roles, which helps us understand what brought Kahlo and Rivera together, and (mostly) held them together through some very difficult times. Unfortunately, the steady stream of big name movie stars in roles that could (and should) have been played by character actors proves an impediment. Both Ashley Judd, who plays the seductive Mexican Tina Modotti, and Geoffrey Rush, as Leon Trotsky, are unsuited to their roles, and as fine an actor as Ed Norton is, there is no need (beyond his personal relationship with the film’s star) for he to be sauntering through the film as Nelson Rockefeller, reminding us that we are watching yet another star-studded bio-film. What is disappointing about Frida is what it could have been. While this conventional bio-pic may please middle brow audiences, fans of Ms. Taymor are almost certain to realize that the film could have been so much more than this.

Score: 69/100