Phie Ambo: Free the Mind/ 1
Below, in Danish, in connection with the national premiere on June 6, a review of the new film of Phie Ambo, who brillliantly invites her audience on a both emotional and informational journey into the traumatised lives of two American war veterans as well as introduces us to Will, a kid who suffers from ADHD. Will is too scared to enter an elevator, the two vets fight with experiences that have had severe consequences for their post-war lives.
Into their lives comes professor Richard Davidson and his scientific team. The film follows the process the soldiers go through at the research centre of Davidson, and what the pedagogical team does to help Will overcome his fear.
The film is made for the big screen. As her female documentary star colleagues, Pirjo Honkasalo and Kim Longinotto, and at the same quality level, Ambo does the camera herself and brings beauty to the characters, at the same time as she with music and sound (maybe a bit overdosed) supports an editing that is superb in its integration of the four characters in a narrative flow. On top of that there are graphic and animation sequences, the latter sometimes made as were we in a school – white chalk on a blackboard. Fine solution!
Which, for this reviewer, is the core of this film’s success: You get a cinematic experience, you follow an exciting healing process, you are touched, maybe mostly by seeing a little boy’s fear, and you are offered knowledge, you might learn someting about the brain, ”the most complicated phenomenon in the universe”.
Denmark, 2012, 90 mins.
