Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

There are films that arrive quietly and spend decades finding their audience, and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One is perhaps the most extreme example of that particular journey. Shot in 1968 in New York's Central Park by William Greaves, the film sat largely unseen for years before finding renewed attention in the 1990s, when filmmakers including Steven Soderbergh championed it and helped bring it to wider notice. That belated recognition says something interesting about the film: it was arguably ahead of what audiences and even critics were ready to process at the time of its making.

Greaves was, by 1968, already an established figure in American documentary filmmaking, having worked extensively in educational and public affairs film. With Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, produced under his own Take One Productions banner, he pushed well beyond anything recognisable as conventional documentary territory. The premise is deliberately layered: a screen test is staged in the park, in which pairs of actors run through a scripted confrontation between a troubled couple. One camera films the actors, a second films the crew watching the actors, and a third films the whole arrangement from further out still. The result is something that folds back on itself, raising questions about who is performing, who is observing, and where, if anywhere, the film actually lives. It is the sort of formal experiment that sits comfortably alongside the more philosophical European cinema of the same period, films such as Persona and Winter Light, even if it arrives from a very different cultural tradition. The cast includes Patricia Ree Gilbert and Don Fellows in the central screen test roles, alongside Jonathan Gordon and Susan Anspach, with Greaves himself appearing on camera as the director being observed as much as he is the director observing. That blurring of roles is entirely the point.

Where most documentaries of the era were organised around a clear subject and a guiding authorial voice (as you can see even in something as different in tone as Next Goal Wins or Nom Tèw), Greaves appears to have been actively working against those conventions, creating something that refuses to resolve into a finished object. The film runs to 75 minutes and carries no tagline, no explanatory framing, and, as its title cheekily signals, presents itself as a first take rather than a completed work. Whether that is a statement of artistic intent or a limitation dressed up as one has been argued about ever since.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) is less a conventional film and more a cinematic experiment that defies easy categorisation. It hovers somewhere between documentary, meta-fiction, and avant-garde provocation. Shot in Central Park over several days, it layers multiple streams of reality: actors performing a scripted scene about a couple on the brink of divorce, a film crew documenting them, other crews filming that crew, and unscripted passersby wandering through it all. The result is a dizzying hall of mirrors that questions authorship, performance, and the very nature of truth in cinema. But that intellectual ambition doesn’t always translate into engagement. Without narration, clear structure, or traditional storytelling cues, the film can feel aimless, even alienating. The “acting” in the central scene is deliberately stilted (part of the concept), but that doesn’t make it compelling to watch. Meanwhile, the raw footage of everyday life in the park (kids playing, joggers, confused onlookers) adds texture but little thematic cohesion. It’s fascinating as a concept, yet frustrating as an experience. Objectively, it’s unfinished, rough around the edges, and resists the label of “film” altogether. If it’s a documentary, it offers no guidance; if it’s fiction, it denies narrative satisfaction. It’s pure arthouse, an artifact for film students and theorists more than general audiences. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is historically significant and undeniably bold, but it’s not really for anyone outside cinephile circles. You don’t so much watch it as witness it, and even then, you might leave wondering what, if anything, you were meant to take away. A curiosity, not a classic.

For me, that tension between admiration and frustration is really the only honest way to sit with this film. I can appreciate what Greaves was attempting, and I can see why it has earned its place in the conversation around experimental American cinema. But appreciation is not the same as enjoyment, and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is, to put it plainly, a difficult watch in ways that feel less productive than the film seems to believe. The ideas are there. The experience of them, less so. Worth knowing about, perhaps worth seeing once, but polished and unremarkable it most certainly is not, for better and for worse.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1968  | Watched: 2026-04-29

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Trailer

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