In the tradition of Woody Allen's Bananas and Tim Robbin's Bob Roberts, Schizopolis is a nonsensical satire that deviates from almost every conventional narrative device in filmmaking. Plot is seemingly inconsequential in this farce that has Soderbergh playing a speechwriter and dentist in parallel universes that intersect. Although storylines merge, crash, and deconstruct at every turn, Schizopolis has an uncanny way of keeping the viewer interested through its shocking and effective word play, parody, and general zaniness.
The comedy shows Uranus's irrationality at work in our lives. Sometimes the general crazy-making of a Uranus transit cannot be made sense of rationally. Rather, we must enter into the bizarre and peculiar territory with what the Buddhist's call "Beginner's Mind"—a non-evaluative stance of awareness and acceptance. When Uranus makes a significant transit to our natal chart, such as the Uranus square or opposition to its own position, we must abandon the conventional, linear, and straightforward and dive into a new game with new rules, behaviors, and outcomes. Soderbergh's Schizopolis might be called a "quantum comedy" because its rules, logic, and structure is more akin to the quantum world of nonlocality and observer dependence then the Newtonian-Cartesian world that we normally function within.
Critics and fans attribute Schizopolis's genesis and reason for being to Soderbergh's dissatisfaction with his recent Hollywood projects, pressure from his hectic schedule, and his lack of having a hit since Sex, Lies, and Videotape. All factors being valid, a transcendental or final cause for Soderbergh's Schizopolis was his experiencing of a transit from Uranus to his natal Sun in Capricorn at the time of its completion and release. (see chart; solar only)
When asked why he wanted to make Schizopolis, Soderbergh offered, "Just the ideological freedom… Schizopolis was an effort to get back to the kinds of films I made when I made short films, which were much funnier, more energetic and much more playful than any of the features I've made."(4) When we receive a significant Uranus transit to our natal chart, freedom, creativity, and energy-all ingredients that Soderbergh mentions were responsible for Schizopolis-come to the fore as primary psychological needs and motivations. Often when we feel stuck in drab, dead-end, and dreary jobs and relationships, a Uranus transit rejuvenates us, we wake up, heed an inner call, and experiment and play with the juices of creativity.
Schizopolis may not be Soderbergh's finest film, but it will go down as his most daring and unconventional, and, although Schizopolis doesn't always succeed in what it attempts, Soderbergh illustrates that it's okay to go off the deep-end and be a bit crazy with things once in a while-and what better timing with his Uranus transit to his natal Sun. Moreover, Schizopolis shows that Uranus has a sense of humor. Evolution created the platypus, did it not?
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