Devil and Daniel Johnston Jeff Feuerzeig (Director), The

Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, Nov 2006 by Keltner, Norman L

The Devil and Daniel Johnston Jeff Feuerzeig (Director)

This is a column for reviewing movies that contribute to our culture's accurate understanding of mental illness and psychiatric care.

The title of this movie is derived, I presume, from the short story entitled "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet (1938). Having read the short story, I can confidently say that other than the title, no other similarity exists. Daniel Johnston (born in 1961), is a musician and songwriter who suffers from bipolar disorder. He is invariably described as a genius both fueled and thwarted by his mental condition.

This film opens with an 8 mm clip of Daniel as a youngster. Throughout the film, historical movie and video vignettes are interspersed with current footage. Strikingly, the early recordings during childhood and adolescence portray a normal looking and mostly socially competent youngster. The image of normalcy starts veering off a little in an early home-movie production in which Daniel plays his mother. He portrays her as harsh and unrelenting in her views of proper conduct, etc. His "production" is definitely over the top, but is still diagnostically unremarkable standing alone. Daniel is the baby of the family and other family members' comments, recollections, and analyses of him are sprinkled throughout the documentary.

The audience quickly finds out that Daniel is talented, and a cult-like following places high value on his songs and performances. I was surprised because I had never heard of Daniel Johnston and found his singing, both current and from younger days, uninteresting-sort of a poor and deaf man's Bob Dylan. Nonetheless, the promotion materials and the film assure us of his talent and his genius. According to a couple of Web sites, Johnston has been featured on MTV and has been associated with names I recognize but know little about (e.g., Pearl Jam, Nirvana-OK, my age and musical inclinations are showing). Johnston also has gained acclaim for his artwork of which a significant number seem to deal with eyeballs and satanic images. This type of fame is easier to comprehend because many of us have scratched our heads in bewilderment at what others find artistically irresistible.

As I watched the film it dawned on me how unusual it is for anyone to have a film/video collection on his life so extensive that it would permit this undertaking-childhood films, adolescent films, amateur movies, professional videos, etc. I wondered if the abundance of footage was somewhat diagnostic in its own right. I am not sure! A concern that bubbled up during the film was the several references to his family's religious outlook. Their church was referred to as fundamentalist, and once as a West Virginia right-wing fundamentalist group. The film suggests this narrow and psychologically brutal upbringing played a role in Daniel's emotional demise. But just as you expect to find some character out of Deliverance hovering around the church door with a basket of snakes in tow, the viewer discovers that the family belongs to the Church of Christ denomination. There is one down the street from me, for goodness' sake. These are not nutty people. Daniel, although he blames the church for many things, reaches out to her for help when his life is crumbling beneath him and he is away from home. The church responds. Further, after these innuendos (parallel with the old "schizophrenogenic mother" stuff) we see who is still standing with Daniel after the hip crowds have dispersed and the friends have decided Daniel is too much to handle-an aging mom and dad who love the man as much as they loved the boy. I guess fundamentalists, with their rigid value of family, come in handy from time to time.

Is This a Real Reel?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes. This film, even with its antireligious bias, does a good job of capturing the rise and fall and fall and rise of a man many people find talented. The genius and drive of the manic state are there to see and feel: the breakdowns, frenzied performances, the enjoyment of the manic high, delusions of grandeur, extreme religiosity, delusions of demonic persecution, cheeking of medications, preaching about satan and the antichrist at concerts, etc. The film traces the ups and downs of his life; the adoration of crowds, abandonment, and hospitalizations. The movie also brings home the loneliness, the frustration of the family, the lack of insight, the struggle to find love (he continues to pine for a girl he knew briefly many years before), and disrupted lifestyle of a person with bipolar disorder. Finally, the film shows that no matter how flawed, it is often the family that endures to the bitter end. For me, this latter point makes the movie worthwhile.

No. The "no" is simply this-because the film is real and because those filming Daniel Johnston over the years presumably turned the camera off when he demonstrated manic behaviors-the viewer does not see the range of symptoms we know to expect. While the teenage home movie in which he portrays his mom is odd, alone it tells us little. The viewer does see some more current footage in which Daniel is obviously experiencing manic and/or confused thinking. Such film moments will be educational for students but most of the DSM behaviors are left to the description of friends and family.