A disconcertingly direct and intimate documentary film by Frederick Wiseman exploring the abusively cruel conditions in which men were kept inside the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The film was controversially banned for a number of years over the rights of privacy of those depicted. In a 2016 interview in Filmmaker magazine Wiseman stated: “’It’s both naive, arrogant, and presumptuous for me or any other filmmaker to say that their film produces social change. In a democratic society people have access to information from so many different sources. You can’t isolate one thing and say that that particular poem or novel or film caused it,’” said Wiseman. “’I like to think the movie may have contributed to [Bridgewater closing], but I actually have no idea.’”
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