WHAT IS NORMAL? is a documentary about a group of mentally and/or physically handicapped people who? do things? I guess. That?s the problem with this film; I wasn?t sure what I was supposed to be getting from it. It opens with an incredibly silly sequence which includes an antagonistic (and horribly written) statement about how people with disabilities are and have been grievously mistreated throughout history. We are informed that they are people too and should be treated as such. Thanks. My problem here is not with what is at the heart of this statement. Anyone with a shred of common sense and decency would agree with it. The problem I have is with the almost apocalyptic tone that is set here. It was way too heavy (and heavy-handed) for the film that follows.
After we have so thoroughly gotten off on the wrong foot, we meet the five people that the film will focus on. They all come from different backgrounds and have various disabilities of ranging severity. All of their stories are inspirational and it goes without saying that they deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as anyone else. This begs the question: why was this documentary made and what is it trying to accomplish? If we are in agreement that the disabled should be treated equally, then why should a film be made that lauds them for leading perfectly normal lives? They work, they shop, they go bowling, they have hobbies. So what? In the opening, we are told that these people overcame ?atrocities? to lead these normal lives. What are these ?atrocities? that they endured? The film only touches on this lightly, which is nonsensical because it is the mistreatment of these people that is supposed to validate the film?s existence. It is what the movie purports to be about. You can?t say you are making an inspirational documentary, then gloss over your subject?s struggle or mention it in passing and expect your audience to find it amazing that they now go shopping or paint pictures.
The film feels almost as if it was made as an educational video to be shown to some archaic society that still suggests drilling holes in the heads of people with down-syndrome to let the demons out. Anybody who spends any time outside, among people, sees persons with disabilities all the time. I think that the vast majority of our society doesn?t think that people with mental retardation should be locked away or that they have devils in their heads. So, unless the film was intended for the minority (which I hope is extremely small), who feel that the handicapped should be confined, I don?t understand the point of it.
The technical problems are another issue entirely. Of the five primary subjects, four of them have speech difficulty. Two do not speak at all. The other two are occasionally hard to understand. It doesn?t help that most of the audio was poorly recorded. Also, subtitles should be employed because it seems like these people have important things to say. I wish I hadn?t missed a third of it.
Finally, the film has one of the strangest structures of any documentary I have ever seen. It seems to move backwards. It starts by showing the subjects living their normal lives and then works into the abuse they may have endured. I say ?may? because the makers allow some of the people in the film to make claims about the ways in which they were treated with negligence and abuse at various care facilities, but they don?t follow up or investigate in any way. These are serious claims and should be substantiated if true. But either way, it seemed like at the beginning, the intention was to make an uplifting documentary. So why end with the abuse and have the movie go out on a depressing note? This completely and unnecessarily alters the tone of the film. Besides, it makes no sense to do it this way because in the chronology of the subjects? lives, the abuse happened first. So basically, the documentarians were provided with a happy ending and still managed to mess it up.
Adam Karpin was born in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated from Temple University?s Film and Media Arts program with a focus on screenwriting. His first feature-length script, a period western entitled The Rebel Hills, is currently being shopped to producers. Adam was the resident film critic for the now-defunct Philly Guys Internet Radio Show. In early 2012, he co-founded the website, American Foreground, for which he provides pop-culture commentary. He is also an avid reader and hockey enthusiast.
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