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CONSPIRACIZED
Produced, Directed, Written, and Edited by Chad Schultz
Director of Photography - Mike Withers Daniel/Jeremy - Danny Beissel
Price - Pat Beissel
Dark - E.P. MacAdams
Star - Denise Dickens"Keep playing, understanding will come in time."
You can't go on any sort of artist-related message board, be it film, music, or literature, without reading a hundred posts about the evils of Dubya and corporate America. My challenge to all these people has always been to turn their hateful internet jabs into a movie, or other respective piece of art. Channel those passions into something that will provoke an audience both intellectually and emotionally. Very few actually take me up on the challenge.
Without provocation from me, Director Chad Schultz does exactly what others have been to cowardly to do, make a passionately political piece of microcinema with his CONSPIRACIZED. The ideals behind the movie have been echoed a thousand times - corporations are killing America and taking away our freedom of choice. They want to train Americans to be Pavlov's dogs. To buy their products. To brainwash us.
The film focuses on Daniel, presumably fresh out of college, he's found a company that he wouldn't mind working for as a product researcher. Daniel's father wants to know the income while his mother wants to know about the health benefits. It's what they've been trained to ask. To them, those are the rewards of hard work. They don't know personal freedom, or the personal benefits that certain employers can provide. To Daniel's parents there's a contractual obligation between worker and employee. For the hard work put in, an employer is entitled to make good with pay and health care. They grew up in the days before tele-commuting or flex hours.
But The Company that hires Daniel doesn't want a product researcher, they want someone they can train to infiltrate a cult of free thinking artists run by a man named Dark. This cult preaches freedom. Members take the time to enjoy their day and make choices that benefit the collective whole and not merely the self. They share their art and music, bringing other free thinkers into the fold. It's their belief that as a society we've forgotten who we are and how to enjoy life. "Keep playing, and understanding will come in time," the beautiful Star tells Daniel.
Star and the rest of Dark's commune spend their days singing and playing that time-tested children's game duck duck goose. It's a game we all played as children - when we were our most free. The commune members live in a world free from grown-up responsibilities and worries. Health care packages mean nothing to these people. Living like sharecroppers, they represent the antithesis of big business and corporate America. Their choice is NOT to choose between either Coke or Pepsi.
The first half of CONSPIRACIZED splits its time between Daniel's infiltration of the commune and his corporate training to pass as one of the commune members. It's an interesting comparison as Daniel has as difficult a time becoming a member of the commune as he did with his training. The trick is that you can't fake sincerity. Ask yourself the next time you see an actor hocking something on television if those pearly whites are showing because they believe in the product or the million dollars they're being paid to advertise that product. Those actors might appear convincing, but we know it's just a lie.
The second half concerns itself with Daniel's conversion into the commune as he decides that a "free" life is really for him. It's the beautiful Star that shines the light down up on Daniel. He's charmed by her smile, and Star's smile reflects her pure happiness, a happiness that can only come from complete freedom. Their initial meeting starts with a game of tag where she lets herself get caught. She skips along like a little girl and tells Daniel to "keep playing. Understanding will come in time."
Star represents the freedoms this country was founded on. She wears the colors of the flag: red, white, and blue. She speaks about special places. Places that can't be washed or scraped away. Our ancestors founded this country because they wanted a special place of their own, a place to exercise their personal freedoms. Star's job is to remind us, and Daniel, that special places still exist. Schultz would have us believe that those places are outside of mass society.
Schultz appears to be selling us on society that boarders somewhere between socialism and anarchy, both of which have their own benefits. While they both would help spur personal artistic growth, they would hinder the technological growth of mankind. As an individual, you have to ask yourself which is more beneficial, your immediate inner growth or the growth of mass society as a whole.
Upon my second and third viewing of CONSPIRACIZED I noticed Schultz clever use of puns. For example, take the line which becomes the mantra of the film, "keep playing, understanding will come in time." It's delivered during an unspoken game of tag while Daniel carries his guitar. Is star telling Daniel to keep exercising his artistic freedom, or is she telling him to continue chasing her, or is she telling him to shun his responsibilities to the work force. My favorite occurs halfway through the movie where a title card flashes " I feel like I'm in a cult film." Blindfolded and led into the woods, is Daniel referring to a 1970's exploitation film with a cult following, or is her referring to a film about cults. Schultz's script is filled with multiple plains where the story works, and not simply the previously mentioned puns. He leaves the levels of text and subtext open so that we as audience members can choose to take away with it what we please.
I don't completely agree with all the views presented by Schultz, but I would love to discuss them with him. Not only does he present an extremely patriotic movie that believes whole-heartedly in notions in which our country was founded, but he also presents a persuasive argument for a socialist society. Schultz does so with this excellent example of microcinema that's one of the smartest pieces of microcinema I've seen. The self-distributed DVD for CONSPIRACIZED contains the feature only.