On the occasion of the release of the collector box Nicolas Philibert: In psychiatry Blaq Out (containing the films) On Adamant, Averroès and Rosa Parks, The Typewriter and other sources of hassle & The Mind of Things), we will go back one by one on these different documentaries of director focused on the psychiatry community. Passionate, documenting the evolution of this practice between 1992 (The Mind of the and 2024, and facing the humanity of these people so different but yet bringing us back to the centre of what the human is. Let's start with The Mind of Things Which is chronologically the first film in this set...
Gombrowicz, an accordion and dances
A castle, a large park, people who spread there. We understand that preparations are under way. We'll be playing it soon. Operetta of the Witold Gombrowicz. The accordion disturbs the centuries-old trees. The laughter is coming. Creeping and singing too. It must be said that actors are not professionals. They are all residents or caregivers at the La Borde clinic, specialized in psychotherapy.
Without contextualization, with author's interventions circumcised to a few sentences spoken in response to patients, The Mind of Things (which is chronologically the first film selected in this box In Psychiatry) proposes a real dive into the world of psychotherapy of the 1990s. Certainly not neutral, because filming is obviously influenced by a montage sometimes a bit too much cutting (we would have liked more often long scenes rather than those many cuts that certainly bring a rhythm, but which prevent the saynetes from taking on their full scope), the documentary makes emerge from the slices of life. Philibert takes care of capturing the eyes – full of doubt, circumspect, sometimes amused, sometimes disturbed by this voyeur and intimate camera – and detailing the gestures.
The clumsy steps, the fingers that press on the tablets of medicines to fill whole saucers, the voices that sound and sound, sometimes long (and striking) inserts face-camera... The more we sink with them in this summer rhythmized by the repetitions of this piece, the more we make a place at their side. The more their abnormalities disappear. More human in each outcrop.
A galloped text
Even better, we understand the particular resonance that Gombrowicz's text takes for them. A piece developed by the Polish author for more than 15 years, as he explains here: "I then came out my drafts ofOperetta, a piece that I had begun when I was still working at the bank – and that I had abandoned – and with which I had struggled again in Tail, and which I had once again put in a drawer..." (Testament. Interviews with Dominique de Roux). In these dances, these songs, the urgency that passes through the text and its play on the false-likers, on the appearances, interpreted by these actors, take on their full meaning. Farewell the "incommodated, rigid, obsolete" form of the theatre (according to Gombrowicz's own words), welcome to spontaneity, dissonance, benefactory madness.
If it takes a few minutes to get into the film, to understand its device that propels you into this life without preamble, it comes out revived, happy, probably more human. The final performance, under the eyes of a visibly amused audience and Gombrowicz's wife herself, will end up giving the film a joyful tint, which avoids the leadant or pathos to simply show how indispensable and alive these psychotherapy places are, exactly like what he will do twenty years later with About Adamant. A beautiful documentary!
Data sheet (The Mind of Things)
DVD Region B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 104 min
Release date: 03 December 2024
Video format: 576p/25 – 1.66
Soundtrack: French Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles : French
The set contains the other films by Nicolas Philibert (On Adamant, Averroès and Rosa Parks, The Typewriter and other sources of hassle & The Mind of Things), numerous video bonuses (including « Nicolas Philibert, chance and necessity », a film by Jean-Louis Comolli (2019, 90) and a 144-page booklet. The films are the subject of separate reviews to be found on MaG.
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