Ah, Warrendale, Warrendale, wherefore art thou, Warrendale? Actually, geographically speaking, the controversial home for troubled teenagers was once located on the outskirts of Toronto, but that's a rather minor point of concern. Much more central to my experience, Warrendale is without a doubt one of the most poignant and personally meaningful films to me in the entire Criterion Collection. In this groundbreaking documentary, Allan King applied the principles of cinéma vérité to the task he was given of creating a documentary of life in an experimental residential treatment center for behaviorally challenging adolescents. Over the past several years I've reviewed it, I've discussed it at length in a podcast, I've even used portions of it on the job as training material for my co-workers at the residential treatment agency that I've worked for over the past 26+ years. (But I don't do that anymore since I'd have to pay a licensing fee, just to clear things up before this disclosure causes me any trouble!) It's easily one of the most frequently played discs in my library, and I still manage to find new points of intrigue and insight with each viewing, as I compare the critical incidents and routine interventions captured on film with my own professional experience. I've often shared the observation that such a movie could never be made nowadays, at least not in the USA or Canada or any other society that takes patient rights and confidentiality seriously, since much of the footage presented in Warrendale requires brutal compromise of such considerations by today's standards. As far as I can tell though, the young people whose coming-of-age crises provoke such fascination over the course of the film's 100 minutes have come to terms with their role as human guinea pigs, both in the treatment setting and in the manner in which they were offered up as specimens for our astonished contemplation.
For those who haven't seen the film (and I suspect a fair number of readers here fall into that camp), the set-up is direct and uncomplicated. From the film's opening shots, we're introduced to a particular program designed to help traumatized kids make a successful re-entry into mainstream society. There's almost nothing provided in the way of background information on any of the people involved, neither adult nor child. We see each person functioning in the role assigned to him or her and its left up to the viewer to figure out how they fit into the system, and the degree of effectiveness they demonstrate in the process. A full spectrum of life is on display - mundane household tasks, organizational routines and behind-the-scenes conversations are given practically as much screen time as the acting-out episodes and intense therapeutic interventions that sear themselves into our memory as we see powerful emotions erupt and spill over into moments of aggression, property destruction and self-abusive behavior. There are more of these moments than I can count, where I can't help but wonder to myself how the person operating the camera practiced enough discipline to keep the film rolling while all hell was breaking loose, with adults restraining children and feelings ramping up into a hot boil all the way around.
I'm also struck by the incredible anachronisms contained, without commentary or apology, in Warrendale, interventions and conditions that would simply not be allowed or tolerated in today's treatment environment. Among them: women in dresses restraining young boys by pinning them to the floor and straddling their bodies and yelling in their face as some kind of therapeutic technique; an adult man wrapping his limbs around a teenager still wearing her nightgown, doing physical management as a 1:1 intervention without any witnesses (other than the cameraman) right there on the girl's bed; juveniles allowed to smoke cigarettes and drink beer as part of the unit's "hockey night" activities; all sorts of environmental hazards (sharp utensils, porcelain cups, ladders and tools within easy access of the residents) and interactions between the staff members and the clients that send up red flags in terms of the professional boundaries that don't appear to have been properly defined or enforced for anyone's best interests. But it was the Sixties, a very different era from the one we live in today, and as I mentioned above, this kind of treatment environment was still very experimental, controversial enough in its own time, and still presumably unaware of many of the problems that their methods would stir up despite their good intentions.
Setting aside for now my own personal involvement with the kind of work documented in Warrendale, I must also point out what a powerful example it provides of the possibilities of documentary film. As is implied in the title of the Eclipse Series box that contains it (The Actuality Dramas of Allan King), something new and unique was being forged here - not quite the guided tour provided by an expert narrator who mediates for the viewer the meaning of the events we see on screen, but also not the manufactured crises of conventional narrative fictions. King and his crew had the brilliant idea (also being explored at the time by other directors in the cinéma vérité movement) of putting their cameras and microphones in places where dramatic things could be expected to happen, if they just remain patient and unobtrusive enough to avoid provoking an artificial response. The crew members were also obliged to build some degree of trust and rapport with their subjects, a process that must have been quite delicate with some of the emotionally volatile children and even some of the staff who had to wonder what kind of a madhouse they'd gotten themselves into. It was enough to have to deal with attitudes and behaviors that were often irrational, abusive and disturbing, but to do all that work under the scrutiny of a camera operator and a sound man... wow, I am both impressed and slightly bewildered as to how they all managed to pull this off. For all the mistakes they made (according to my 21st century standards of professionalism and ethical treatment), I have to accord both the clinical staff and the film makers a high level of respect, doing the best they could under difficult conditions. Warrendale represents a profound fusion of life and art, one that offers many benefits even to those who have never worked in social services or immersed themselves in the problems afflicting people afflicted with mental illness.
Next: Branded to Kill