ドキュメンタリー「選挙」が０７年のフォーラム部門で話題を呼んだ想田和弘監督は今回、精神科診療所の患者、医師たちを見つめた「精神」で招かれた。満席となる回が出るなど、関心を集めた。
質疑応答で撮影の苦労を尋ねられると、監督は「日本のテレビドキュメンタリーのように患者の顔を隠したり、声を変えたりしたくなかった。撮影をお願いしても、１０人中、８、９人には断られた」と振り返った。
（中略）フォーラム部門は前身の時代の９１年から、園監督に目を付け、今回が４作目。２度目の想田、舩橋両監督もおり、映像作家の成長を見守っていく意志が感じられる。
The next series standout is Kazuhiro Soda's Mental (February 20), about the depressed, neurotic, and otherwise paralyzed patrons of a Japanese psychiatric clinic. Hitting hard with a few quick, numbing consultations, Soda then slowly and compassionately circulates among patients and staff. Though the film is noted for breaking Japanese taboo-powered silence about mental illness, I haven't seen many American documentaries as devoted to stalled-out minds. Soda's appreciation for his subjects' desperate resilience and camaraderie is balanced by an unappeasable crank monopolizing the community-center phone at the film's conclusion.
Mental (dir. Kazuhiro Soda) – As Neil Young has already indicated, this film may test the patience of some, but for me this observational documentary about a Japanese mental health facility is worthy of the mantle of Soda’s idol Frederick Wiseman. The film extends itself to its subjects, allowing them to express themselves in their own time, making up for the gross neglect paid them in a society where the mentally disabled are kept well from view. This cinematic act of generosity eventually reaps ample rewards as the patients’ oddly lucid musings on the purpose of their lives and their struggles with happiness and compulsive thoughts of suicide lead to a startling universality. If the Berlinale gave awards for the “performances” of documentary subjects, surely one would go to Sugano, a brilliant but fragile ex-social worker who directs his own scenes and whose poetry provides the script for one of the most emotionally affecting scenes of the festival so far.
Dr. Yamamoto Masatomo is seeing patients. The woman who enters his office recounts, completely distraught, how she wanted to kill herself the previous night because her friends have abandoned her. Dr. Yamamoto tells her to ask her friends why they abandoned her – and promptly calls for the next patient. At first the doctor comes across as a callous old codger whose licence should be taken away, perhaps because he's too old to be any good at his job. But by the end of the film, which observes over a lengthy period the doctor, his working method, the patients and the staff at his outpatient mental health clinic Chorale Okayama in Japan, you want to kneel in reverence before this man whom his patients compare with Buddha.
Mental is at the same time a simple and yet monumental documentary film. With a high degree of empathy with people who suffer from mental illness, the director manages to present this special clinic as a microcosm in which all the fundamental questions of our time are asked. The film gives no answers; rather it is a humanist appeal – and an unusual declaration of love to the civilizing secrets of Japanese culture.
Dorothee Wenner
At the Forum 2009, filmgoers won’t just have the chance to discover a wealth of new names and cinematic signatures. A whole range of filmmakers who have already shown one or more films at previous editions of the Forum will also be making a welcome return.
Japanese director Soda Kazuhiro is, for example, just one of the 16 directors back with us this year; his debut Campaign was shown at the Forum in 2007. His new film Mental (Seishin) is an equally original and uncompromising filmic observation. His compatriot Funahashi Atsushi should also still be fresh in audience’s memories: his road movie Big River was shown at the Forum in 2006; his new film Deep in the Valley is a melancholy story set in Tokyo with a strong documentary leaning......(continued)
