Children of Stalin by Harrie Timmermans

“My soul is like a snowflake. You’re melting it.” A mentally ill patient is under examination, and it hurts. He is failing the doctor’s test on logical thinking. Besides, he cannot think right now because he is starving he says. Neglected patients, shabby facilities and fragmentary conversations are the main ingredients of disturbingly seducing Children of Stalin by Dutch director Harrie Timmermans, set at the Surami Mental Hospital in Georgia.

Since Soviet times the clinic’s number of patients has decreased from more than 700 to today’s 70. The pensioners – some of them who don’t even know why they’ve been locked up – range from depressed women left behind by their families to severely mentally disabled patients. Most are just fleetingly observed through Timmermans’ lens, but some thirst for his attention. A woman even sings and dances, happy about the big number of friends she’s made among the patients.

Timmerman documented the same hospital as a still photographer ten years before. But he decided to return to capture the slow passage of time in the hospital, “something only possible in moving images”. Extraordinary camerawork with long sweeping steady cam shots creates a compelling illusion of actually being strolling through the anxiety-ridden corridors and dormitories yourself. Indeed cinematography distinguishes this documentary from other reports on the state of things in the psychiatric care.

While calling on the curiosity of the viewer, the strict visual approach keeps the filmmaker at a safe distance from the ugliness of human suffering. Thereby it also reproduces our general way of relating to people that are different. Easy to feel pity for, difficult to give a hand.

Anna Weitz