Elec­tric Malady

William has a rare afflic­tion – one that most peo­ple have nev­er heard of, and even for those who are famil­iar, many will be scep­ti­cal about its legit­i­ma­cy. He suf­fers from elec­trosen­si­tiv­i­ty; an ill­ness pur­port­ed­ly brought on by a reac­tion to the elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields from tele­phones, wire­less devices and the many forms of radi­a­tion mod­ern soci­ety relies on to keep us con­nect­ed. But William is not con­nect­ed – he spends his days under a shroud of cop­per-lined fab­rics in a foil encased bed­room in a cab­in locat­ed in the Swedish countryside.

Marie Liden’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, Elec­tri­cal Mal­a­dy, is a doc­u­men­tary med­i­tat­ing on a rare ail­ment that requires our com­pas­sion. As you step into the world of William and his fam­i­ly, Liden qui­et­ly slots into the inti­mate set­ting requir­ing you to leave your scep­ti­cism at the door. How­ev­er, although Liden is focused on the life of William, the once adven­tur­ous, social man now forced into intro­ver­sion by an invis­i­ble ill­ness, she is not inter­est­ed in inves­ti­gat­ing her subject’s med­ical diag­no­sis or a sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion behind it. There is no attempt to con­vince or convert.

For instance, Liden could have detailed her own expe­ri­ence with elec­trosen­si­tiv­i­ty that caused her fam­i­ly to live with­out many of the com­forts of mod­ern life, but she choos­es to omit this fact. There is no aim to insert her­self into the pic­ture, aside from the odd ques­tion she asks William.

What Elec­tric Mal­a­dy offers instead is a por­trait of a man who despite his iso­la­tion and extreme­ly lim­it­ed cre­ative out­lets, remains hope­ful. Even when he speaks of sui­cide, it is posit­ed more as an act of euthana­sia than of des­per­a­tion. William has faced those that don’t believe his con­di­tion, labelling it sim­ply as unre­solved trau­ma, but after over an hour of watch­ing William strug­gle with the mun­dane – such as cov­er­ing an old Walk­man with a tin and danc­ing in the hall­way to keep active – it’s dif­fi­cult to not be con­vinced there’s some truth to the matter.

Although Elec­tric Mal­a­dy deals with a sen­si­tive sub­ject with patience and empa­thy, there are moments of lev­i­ty – there’s the absurd image of William cov­ered in his shroud, which makes him resem­ble a jel­ly­fish, or as his father calls him ​“The Ghost”. And while his father’s com­ment is made in jest, William’s afflic­tion has turned him into a ghost, haunt­ing the periph­eries of soci­ety and dis­tant even his fam­i­ly and friends.

Elec­tric Mal­a­dy demon­strates how much mod­ern soci­ety depends on the radi­a­tion we have cre­at­ed and the unknown dam­age of what we can­not see. In the silent moments bro­ken by the rustling of William’s fab­ric con­trap­tion, you learn that what haunts the screen is the spec­tre of unnat­ur­al radi­a­tion we are so blithe­ly unaware of. As such, there is a trag­ic irony to Elec­tric Mal­a­dy: that those afflict­ed can­not expe­ri­ence the film and those who have the priv­i­lege of view­ing it may not believe the con­di­tion even exists.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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