Unrest

This is a film about being lost inside your own body. Jen­nifer Brea had a life of fun and frol­ics laid out ahead of her. She tramped a path around the world, met peo­ple and col­lect­ed unique expe­ri­ences in far-flung locales. And then every­thing sud­den­ly slowed down to a halt when she just couldn’t muster the ener­gy to get out of bed in the morn­ing. Then she couldn’t move her limbs. And then she began find­ing it tough to form any­thing more than gut­tur­al moans.

Her body gave up on her. She dis­cov­ered that she was suf­fer­ing from Chron­ic Fatigue Syn­drome (or ME as it’s more com­mon­ly known). It’s a con­di­tion that remains a com­plete mys­tery – no one knows what caus­es it, how long it lasts or how it can be cured.

At a low ebb, Brea then decid­ed to pick up a cam­era and doc­u­ment her expe­ri­ences as well as col­lect per­son­al tes­ti­monies from suf­fer­ers across the globe. When the term ME was coined, cer­tain wags would refer to it as ​“yup­pie flu”, and the task here is to over­turn these glib assump­tions. Just 10 sec­onds of footage cap­tur­ing Brea walk­ing through her gar­den and then sud­den­ly slump­ing to the floor in agony, scream­ing that it feels like her head is expand­ing, should real­ly be enough to put paid to any remain­ing doubters. This is a sim­ple, infor­ma­tive and clear-eyed advo­ca­cy doc­u­men­tary that taps into the essen­tial truth of how we are all essen­tial­ly pris­on­ers in waiting.

Though the film is for­mal­ly a lit­tle unex­it­ing, Brea makes sure she cap­tures the extent of the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal pain she expe­ri­ences dai­ly, and much of her frus­tra­tion derives from a lack of infor­ma­tion. Plus, she ago­nis­es over the fact that she’s ham­per­ing the progress of her go-get­ting hus­band, who has to spend much of his time tend­ing to her. The film works because, even though it’s specif­i­cal­ly about ME, it picks apart the social stig­ma attached to all forms of ill­ness (and all forms of cure). Through her var­i­ous case stud­ies, Brea shows how some peo­ple are get­ting it right and oth­ers are get­ting it very wrong.