All I ever read about is how disturbing and controversial "Titicut Follies" is, and how the Surpreme Court commanded to ban the film and prevent further distribution because it was (and still is) an embarrassment for the Law in the state of Massachusetts. Okay, it may be disturbing, but it primarily is a truly saddening & depressing documentary that depicts real human beings in some of the most humiliation footage ever shot on camera. The controversial impact of "Titicut Follies" is actually some sort of paradox to itself. One could state that the atrocious and inhumanly cruel behavior of the guards & doctors at the Bridgewater Institution urgently needed to be made public, but on the other hand you could also easily claim that Frederick Wiseman gratuitously spread humiliation footage of defenseless mental patients on a large scale. If you stumbled upon the page of this film, I presume you already know this documentary illustrates in shocking and occasionally painful details how the mental patients at the Massachusetts Bridgewater State Hospital are mistreated and bullied by the staff members. The patients, varying from catatonic people to paranoid and severely suicidal human beings, are humiliated and mocked, resulting in extended images of mentally disabled people shouting and raving around their rooms naked. Wiseman may have had the permission of the patients' relatives and/or their legal guardians to use the footage, but who is he to "exploit" these poor people's lamentable living conditions to make a statement about the contemporary incompetent medical treatment of mental patients? I heavily appreciate this documentary because it caused a huge scandal and undoubtedly influenced the future of medicine in a good way, but maybe the footage never should have left the evidence room of the Supreme Court in Massachusetts. By now "Titicut Follies", in all his uncut and reputedly infamous glory, inevitably is offered on DVD-websites that usually just sell nauseating horror and perverted sleaze films, and the events of this documentary seriously don't belong in this entertainment section. The essence and importance of "Titicut Follies" is actually more reminiscent to the status of Nazi-propaganda films. They're reflections of the black pages in our social history, but by now they're just here to remind us never to go down that road again. No rating from me, because it feels too much like you're judging the real-life misery of defenseless people on a pathetic scale of 1 to 10.
Review of Titicut Follies
