Beautiful, sympathetic, kind, respectful, great insight, pro-medication, and no sensationalism... Well done. This should be required viewing. You can rent it on YouTube or Prime.
2 Reviews
Most sympathetic doc on bipolar disorder
ladylivin29 November 2019
great story, but suffers from technical problems
toddbradley25 November 2015
I don't know why IMDb says this film is still in production. The film is finished, and it has screened at the DOCUTAH festival and for some audiences in Kansas City. Earlier this week, I attended a free screening in KC, sponsored by the non-profit organization shown in the film.
The story is great, and the way the multiple stories are woven together is very effective. The music and sound are also very good, especially for a low budget documentary. Where the film suffers is in the picture. Most of it was shot hand-held without any sort of camera stabilizer, so it has the nauseating look of a smart phone video. That's made a thousand times worse when blown up onto a big screen. The focus is all over the place, too, but almost never on the person who's talking. I think the filmmaker was really going for the popular "shallow depth of field" look, but didn't have the skill or equipment to pull focus expertly. There are also way too many dizzying hand-held whip pans. The end result is hard to watch, which is very sad because the topic and the stories are all very important.
The film follows six people who have bipolar disorder, each who has been affected in a different way and copes in a different way. Some have gotten better with medical care, and some have not. In a poignant and unfortunate twist, one of the characters who seems to be coping very well during the film died before the film was released. The story discusses the highs and lows of suffering from bipolar disorder, as well as some of the medical background on the disease itself, making the point that really it is a spectrum of disorders, and not just one single thing.
I'd recommend the film for people affected by the disease or curious about it. I hope the filmmaker continues to make more films, because I'm sure he learned a lot from this one and will improve his technical skills. He certainly has a good sense of putting a compelling story together, and that's rare in amateur filmmakers.
The story is great, and the way the multiple stories are woven together is very effective. The music and sound are also very good, especially for a low budget documentary. Where the film suffers is in the picture. Most of it was shot hand-held without any sort of camera stabilizer, so it has the nauseating look of a smart phone video. That's made a thousand times worse when blown up onto a big screen. The focus is all over the place, too, but almost never on the person who's talking. I think the filmmaker was really going for the popular "shallow depth of field" look, but didn't have the skill or equipment to pull focus expertly. There are also way too many dizzying hand-held whip pans. The end result is hard to watch, which is very sad because the topic and the stories are all very important.
The film follows six people who have bipolar disorder, each who has been affected in a different way and copes in a different way. Some have gotten better with medical care, and some have not. In a poignant and unfortunate twist, one of the characters who seems to be coping very well during the film died before the film was released. The story discusses the highs and lows of suffering from bipolar disorder, as well as some of the medical background on the disease itself, making the point that really it is a spectrum of disorders, and not just one single thing.
I'd recommend the film for people affected by the disease or curious about it. I hope the filmmaker continues to make more films, because I'm sure he learned a lot from this one and will improve his technical skills. He certainly has a good sense of putting a compelling story together, and that's rare in amateur filmmakers.
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