Stutz

A documentary set in one room. Jonah Hill films his own therapist. Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist. He has practised for years and developed his own method. The method rests on tools. He calls them tools and explains each with a drawing. From there the documentary begins like a lesson. Stutz draws on a card. Three layers of the life force, a ladder, a ball, a river. Each drawing answers a problem. The subject is uncertainty, pain and constant work. He has Parkinson's. His hands shake and he does not hide it. Then the film admits something. Hill stops the camera and says the truth: this was not shot in one day. The backdrop is false. A wig is being worn. It was filmed over months and cut together as a whole. From there the documentary changes direction. Stutz starts asking questions. This time the patient is Hill. The matter of weight opens. Hill was heavy in his youth and the marks of that period remain. His brother died. That subject comes. His mother comes and sits in the room too. What the narrative is interested in is not therapy but control: its idea is that in making this film Hill is again trying to manage something, and that Stutz breaks exactly that. The images are black and white and there are two chairs. The talk is almost entirely between two people. Stutz describes his own life too. His father, his brother's death, and his own choices. The method has a claim: there is no end called being healed, only continuing to work. The documentary does not present that as a solution. Jonah Hill directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes documentaries built on therapy and two-person conversation. Who it is not for: anyone looking for distance; the narrative is wholly personal and the clinical standing of the method is not discussed.