Conference bookie::movies

127.0. "Titicut Follies" by DSSDEV::RUST () Thu Apr 08 1993 23:58

    I settled in to watch this with considerable trepidation; the goings-on
    inside a hospital for the criminally insane didn't sound, somehow, as
    if they would be cheery. And, considering that Frederick Wiseman's
    documentary was banned in Massachusetts for almost 25 years, I expected
    it to be very grim indeed.
    
    And so it was - but not in the way I'd expected. More than anything, it
    reminded me of a badly-run zoo; men shuffling around aimlessly in a
    large room, some staring into the camera, others staring away, could
    easily be bears or apes, some hostile, some afraid - but none
    comprehending. And nearly all the staff members appeared to treat them
    as zoo animals, too; they were fed and bathed and led around as needed,
    sometimes teased to anger, as one might poke a stick through the bars
    to make the bear swat at it, sometimes cajoled, as one might offer bits
    of fruit to make the gorilla come out where it can be seen.
    
    The film has no narration and no text (except for one item, which I'll
    mention later); it's all the cameras-eye-view, the only dialog that
    spoken by the subjects. But it's shot and edited such that each story
    is crystal clear, and by the end I felt that someone had been telling
    me more things than were actually shown. And the characters... their
    crimes were almost never mentioned, nor were many facts about them, so
    with very few exceptions we have no idea why they came here, or how
    long ago, or when - if ever - they're likely to get out. (This leaves
    room for sympathy; I wonder whether I'd have felt differently about
    some of them if I'd heard some hideous catalog of things they'd done
    before being caged. I really don't know.)
    
    There was the George C. Scott lookalike, managing to retain some air of
    dignity even when being led, nude, down the hall for his regular shave.
    His guards kept asking him how he liked his room, and when he'd answer,
    they'd say, "What was that again?" over and over, or repeat the
    original question, until he'd grow furious and frustrated and snarl out
    something angrily. The person shaving him cut the corner of his mouth,
    and the guards kept asking him the same questions as the blood trickled
    over his clenched jaw.
    
    And there was the "big bear" of a man, silver-haired and bearded, who
    was being given a bath. He groaned in pleasure as his scalp was
    shampooed, sounding just like a dog being scratched in the right place;
    eventually he submerged himself, at the urging of the attendants (who
    had been pointing out certain portions of his anatomy that apparently
    were in serious need of bathing), and, beaming with pleasure, took
    delicate sips of the (very dirty) bathwater...
    
    The most disturbing sequence, to me, was the force-feeding. One of the
    patients hadn't eaten in several days, so he was brought down to the
    dispensary or some such place to be tube-fed. Now, since from the sound
    of things tube-feeding was a fairly common procedure, one would expect
    there to be a system for doing it. The film showed the following
    polished, professional treatment: the nasal-gastric tube was fetched,
    the end lubricated - er, no, it appeared they were completely out of
    lubricant; oh, well. The gaunt, weary-looking patient was placed on a
    bench or table, guards holding his hands, feet, and head still; the
    tube was placed in one nostril and pushed in, someone urging the
    patient to "keep swallowing" as the tube reached his throat. The doctor
    (who had an extremely thick German accent, which added a weirdly
    burlesque tone to every scene he was in) kept feeding the tube in until
    one of the guards said, "You've passed the mark," at which point the
    doctor pulled the tube back out again until the little white mark was
    visible. (One wonders how much farther he'd have gone if the guard
    hadn't stopped him.)
    
    Then the doctor stood on a chair, holding the feeding tube and funnel
    in one hand and what looked like a Kentucky Fried Chicken cardboard
    "barrel" of liquid food in the other. Cigarette dangling gracefully
    from his lips, he poured the food into the funnel, waited for it to
    drip down, filled it again, and so forth - as the ash on his cigarette
    grew longer and longer and longer... While others urged the patient to
    swallow, someone - the doctor, perhaps - said, "Leave some for the next
    guy!" 
    
    A close-up of the patient's face showed the tears falling from his
    eyes. 
    
    To make this sequence even more disturbing, it was intercut with rapid
    shots of someone preparing a corpse - who appeared to be the same
    patient - for burial; stuffing cotton under the sunken eyelids to give
    a look of repose, shaving the stiffened features... I found myself
    hoping it was the same patient; I'd have hoped for as much, in his
    place.
    
    At the end of the film came the only commentary not provided by the
    subjects themselves: a screen of text said, "The Massachusetts Supreme
    Court directed that this film include a brief segment explaining 'that
    changes and improvements have taken place at the Bridgewater
    Correctional Institution since 1966.'"
    
    On the next screen: "Changes and improvements have taken place at the
    Bridgewater Correctional Institution since 1966."
    
    Succinct, eh?
    
    It's an impressive film. Not comfortable, but impressive.
    
    -b

    The staff psychiatrist was amazing.  Not only did he have a German
    accent and a dangling cigarette (when I saw it in a theater, the
    force-feeding scene's horror was given an extra added zest by the
    audience's fear that ash was going to fall into the glop funnel), but
    he had a great Dr. Strangelove twitch.
    
    We do find out about at least one patient's history -- a child molester
    who is interviewed by Herr Doktor Professor and comes off as sane in
    comparison.
    
    Wiseman is a remarkable director.  His movies seem more real life than
    real life -- if _I_ was hanging around these places observing, I'm sure
    I wouldn't vanish into the background as effectively as his camera
    does.  At the same time, he builds dozens of coherent narratives to
    keep the viewer grounded, and he clearly has strong opinions about the
    institutions he films -- but his movies are difficult to argue with,
    since he appears to simply present the evidence without comment.
    
    Besides "Titicut Follies", my favorites by him are "Law & Order" (about
    the Kansas City Police Department) and "Welfare" (about a welfare
    office).  He's also done more upbeat treatments of a modelling agency
    and a school for blind, deaf, and dumb children.
    
    Ray

For those in the Boston area, this is being repeated tonight on Channel 2
at 11:00pm.

alan

    
    Good summary, Beth.  This was one of those films that had me wanting
    to avert my eyes and not wanting to avert my eyes at the same time.
    It was painful to look directly into the eyes of some of the
    patients, even with the camera in between.  Jim (the George C. Scott
    lookalike) had eyes that burned a hole in your mind, even as he did
    his surreal dance around the cell.
    
    To my mind, the creepiest man in the place was the guard/follies MC,
    the one that one article described as having "an Ed Sullivan complex."
    He certainly approached his job with what seemed an unholy glee.
    But, having worked for a summer in a maximum security prison, I
    probably shouldn't judge him harshly.  He was probably just trying
    to stay sane.
    
    Titicut Follies is a direct, forceful, and relevant piece of cinema --
    it's too bad we had to wait this long to be able to see it.
    
    Ron 

    Re .1: Yeah, I was quite surprised at how "invisible" the camera
    seemed. Oh, once in a while someone would glance that way, and I
    suspect that some of the attendants (and possibly the wacky
    psychiatrist) were trying to show off a little at times, but in general
    it felt very much as if we had a "magic window" onto people who were
    completely unaware of being observed. (Admittedly, some of the patients
    were probably unaware of _anything_, but others were quite alert
    indeed...)
    
    This is distinct from my last-year's-favorite documentary, "Brother's
    Keeper," in which the camera crew had to befriend their shy and
    reclusive subjects in order to get any footage of them. ['course, they
    didn't have as captive an audience as Wiseman did.] In "Keeper," the
    camera crew became part of the story, in a way, though a small one; but
    in "Follies," it felt as if the story told itself, without any outside
    influence at all.
    
    -b