My most favorite movie titles: (1) Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties & (2) Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1 ½, directed by William Greaves. Greaves’ title refers to the term “symbiotaxiplasm,” a concept coined by social philosopher Arthur Bentley. This term describes the assimilated totality of a society and its affects by humans and to humans. Every person, place, object, and thing that a society creates, maintains, and destroys is accounted for in the word symbiotaxiplasm. Greaves added the “psycho” to affirm how our creativity and psychology can affect our society, and in turn, how we affect it. Make sense? Good. Moving on…
The film starts with a basic premise: film a man and a woman acting out a script, but call it a screen test not a movie. The script is relationship based, and is melodramatic rubbish - something to make Tennessee Williams roll over in his grave. Then, have another camera, in synchronicity, film the crew filming the scene. Additionally, film the crew filming the crew filming the scene. Occasionally grab shots of extraneous action, curious onlookers, picnics, cops demanding permits, and Greaves himself. All this will eventually cause an insurrection from the crew in which they, on camera, revolt against their tyrannical auteur and start forming their own conclusions about what the film is about and what their role is in the experiment.
Michael Haneke is one of the most innovative and exciting filmmakers currently working. His films can be extremely shocking and, at times, graphically violent. But unlike most thriller directors, Haneke chooses to downplay his violence. Haneke prefers a cold austerity to the melodramatic hysterics that characterize modern thrillers. His characters are cold and unfeeling, resulting in an atmosphere of psychological turmoil, emotional paralysis, and impending doom. His paradoxical approach to violence instills an unnerving tension within any well-balanced viewer, and this tension quickly turns into utter terror. Haneke thwarts his viewers of their moment of cathartic release: that tantalizing moment in which viewer and filmmaker can share a moralizing sigh of relief and say, “Ah, wasn’t that horrible?” No one is bailed out of a Haneke film; instead, the viewer must deal with and eventually accept the bleak situation that confronts him. 
