Movie Review: Unrest

Unrest *** / *****

Directed by: Jennifer Brea.

Written by: Jennifer Brea & Kim Roberts.

 

Imagine being so sick that you cannot get out of bed for days at a time. When you try to, you are in immense pain, and often collapse to the ground. Having this go one day in, day out for years – with occasions where everything seems fine, only to be thrust right back into the depths of pain, and an inability to move again. Then imagine that many people – doctors, those in the media, friends, family, etc. – think that you’re making the whole thing up. It’s all in your head, they say, or call you lazy. That is what people who suffer from chronic fatigue go through all the time. It’s a real disease, and yet because doctors cannot isolate its cause, cannot see anything physically wrong with you when they run all the tests they can, many assume it’s psychosomatic. That just makes it all worse.

 

Unrest is a documentary about chronic fatigue, made by Jennifer Brea, who has been suffering with the disease for a few years now. Once, she was active and outgoing – she married her college sweetheart, as they both pursued their Ph.D.’s. Life was seemingly perfect – and then, this happened, and nothing was the same. Brea is lucky among people with this disease – her husband is supportive (and apparently, they have money). Others aren’t as lucky. Brea films herself – and then films others who have the same thing, and let them tell their stories. They’re all different, but none of them are good. Some people have lost marriages over this – their spouses think they’re making it up when they go to one doctor after another, and cannot find anything. In some countries – like Denmark – they treat it as a severe mental illness, and actually institutionalize those with severe cases against their will.

 

As a movie, Unrest is fairly mediocre. It’s interesting, sure, and does provide a lot of information about an illness that people do not understand, that disproportionally effects women, and is hardly being studied. And yet, the film is also rather repetitive, and after the first half hour or so, I’m not sure how much more we really learn about it. It is certainly an advocacy doc – one of them meant to help raise awareness, and get people involved – and on that level, it does what it sets out to do. It wish it was a deeper, more ambitious film – but you cannot deny that it shines a light on an important subject, and does so with intelligence.