'In the Adamant': Exciting, calm documentary about mental illness

A man in his late fifties, eloquent speech, withered face, a couple of days old beard, destroyed teeth, abrupt gesture with occasional hints of tenderness, talks to a therapist while smoking a joint in a strange environment for this type of conversation. : the deck of a boat on the bank of the Seine.

—I once told my father, who was an imposing father, that I knew I had been his only failure.

—Were you sick when you told him that?

-I'm sick.

I'm still sick.

Only strong medications prevent delirium.

Allow me to talk to you.

If not, I think I'm Jesus surrounded by little birds in the sky.

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Nicolas Philibert, thanks to his portrait of a care center for patients with mental illnesses in Paris, wins the Golden Bear

This patient since he was 18 years old, who affirms that “talking is fine” but that “without [pharmacological] treatment it is of no use,” is one of the users of El Adamant, a medical center that is surely unique in the world: a small ship located in the heart of Paris, on the Seine, dependent on the city's Central Unit, which welcomes adults with mental disorders, offering them all types of social and psychiatric help.

About the institution, the place, its patients and its workers, the veteran French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, author of the magnificent

Being and Having

(2002), has composed

En el Adamant,

a film that is at the same time the portrait of a group of men and women of all ages in need of science and calm, warmth and conversation, care and advice, and a vindication of the necessity, of the obligation, of public healthcare with sufficient resources.

Image from 'In the Adamant'.

“I don't like my look.

It reminds me of the hospital,” says another man, probably in his thirties, when he sees an image of his face in close-up, while they practice with a sophisticated camera.

On the Adamant

it's pure shock.

The four musical themes that many other patients perform throughout the documentary are overwhelming.

Here there are people from very different social classes and backgrounds.

Poets and musicians with artistic knowledge.

People with a conventional personal past, and others who were always singular, haunted by the shadows of their minds.

Also very young boys who are not yet as aware as our first protagonist of what is happening to them.

And, with all of them, a key feeling: fragility.

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Philibert, who gained international fame with

Being and Having,

that documentary about a village nursery school in which the unforgettable boy Jojo provoked smiles and tears, has since continued with his style of calm document on very diverse topics with four more copies.

But only one of them, the also fascinating

Return to Normandy

(2007), reached Spanish cinemas.

With

The Adamant,

Golden Bear at the Berlin festival, he returns to our rooms with the meetings, therapies, measures, plans and activities of an admirable institution.

And a single threat of disappointment: in the first sequences the director plants the camera a few feet away from the protagonists, without asking anything, hoping that they will be the ones to take the initiative.

The impudence is just a few inches away.

However, the subsequent development and what lies behind his work, the need for public funds and the work of social awareness, cause those small initial doubts to soon dissipate.

In the Adamant

Director:

Nicolas Philibert.

Genre:

documentary.

France, 2023.

Duration:

109 minutes.

Premiere: February 2.

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