Manic is a movie for those who truly care about the craft of film, about collaborative and creative skill that can come from a work of the heart, about humanity’s relief from suffering, and compassionate answers for otherwise seemingly unsolvable problems. The documentary style filming had an intense effect on the “realistic” feeling of it all. There wasn’t a soul working on this film who did not produce brilliant, genuinely communicative work that demonstrates exactly what the art of filmmaking is at its very best. And it was only the very clear and obvious display of such tight creative genius at work that kept reminding me that this was actually a film instead of real life recorded at an institution by an inmate with an ever-intrusive video camera. For all these reasons, I highly recommend this film.
