A.Sy.Lum (2017)

Directed by: Jaap van Heusden, Jefta Varwijk | 23 minutes | documentary

The image is tilted one hundred and eighty degrees. The focus shifts from sharp to out of focus and back again. The sound is muffled. In the background a voice tells about how the notion of meaning no longer means anything to him.

Welcome to the mind of David Brown, a twenty-something with a psychotic disorder. When he had the delusion in his youth to kill his little brother, he realized that something was not quite right with him. Since then, he has resided in a variety of psychiatric institutions. When he gets the chance to move to a residence with more autonomy, fear reigns. Does he dare take life, or would he rather remain a self-proclaimed Valium zombie?

The oppressive way ‘A.Sy.Lum’ gets inside David’s head gives a good picture of his mental struggles. But the documentary goes one step further. At one point there is a scene where David is asked to walk a bit through a forest and then hug one of the trees. That invisible voice can also be heard by the viewer. As if his psychoses are also ours. With the filmmakers as the evil spirit. In passing, the scene also says something about how we as film viewers are guided by the moving image. Aren’t we all screen-addicting Valium zombies in a sense?

‘A.Sy.Lum’, made in the context of Teledoc Campus for aspiring documentary makers, is an intriguing film about what it feels like to be locked up in one’s own mind.