Stutz examines the poignant void between therapy and attachment

A patient makes a documentary about his therapist. The patient just happens to be an Oscar-nominated actor. The therapist just happens to be. At first, the patient admits that he is making this film to expose the world to his therapist’s visionary tools. He swears by them. His reasoning being: If your methods changed my life, perhaps it could help others. He asks his 74-year-old therapist many questions. The roles are reversed. The answers are simple and heartfelt. It’s apparent that the man is no ordinary shrink. He is unorthodox – a curious mix of spiritual healer and medical trainer – and believes in engaging with his patients instead of simply listening to them. He guides with solutions and theories, refusing to follow the handbook that preaches ‘distance’ between doctor and patient. He sounds like Alan Arkin might if he were playing a rule-breaking psychiatrist.

But as the documentary progresses, it slowly emerges – unbeknownst to both men – that this experiment is far more personal. The patient, Jonah Hill, shares a curious bond with his therapist, Phil Stutz. He admires Stutz as a professional, of course, but he also loves him as a person. And this film – which is composed of a series of conversations – is probably Hill’s way of knowing the man better, of returning the care, of cementing a father figure and immortalizing their platonic connection. His affection is palpable. Midway through, we see Hill revealing a photograph of himself – taken by Stutz a few years ago to ‘capture’ Hill’s emotions when his brother died. His face is unusually serene for someone who is grieving. This documentary, fittingly titled Stutz, is Hill’s way of doing the same: of capturing a memory and confronting it at once. Stutz has Parkinson’s, and Hill’s greatest fear – of losing Stutz too soon – bleeds into his documentary. We learn a lot about the therapist, his thoughts and his history, and we come to understand why he is so perceptive and isolated. But what we’re really doing is seeing Jonah Hill take a 88-minute snapshot – a mental photograph – of the man he is so fond of.

In a way, Stutz reminded me of Dick Johnson Is Dead, a profoundly moving documentary in which the film-maker repeatedly ‘stages’ her dementia-afflicted (psychiatrist) father’s death to prepare herself for his eventual fading. Hill is trying to transcend his one-sided equation with his therapist and make it more human – by aiding Stutz just as Stutz has been aiding him for years. It’s a testament to the work Stutz himself did with Jonah that the film isn’t afraid to turn into something it wasn’t designed to be. It flows, like a relationship looking for the two people that are supposed to define it. For the first twenty minutes, we see Hill asking Stutz about his life and examining his psychiatry techniques in what looks like the therapist’s New York office. Every time Stutz succumbs to his impulse and counters a question with a question, Hill refuses to get into his own life. “This film is about you,” he says. Hill doesn’t know what he’s aiming for, but he senses that this uncertainty is part of the process.

But in the next meeting, Hill realizes that the medium he has chosen – filmmaking, which is the art of lying – is at odds with the vulnerability and truth of these sessions. So the documentary suddenly drops its pretense and reveals that it’s been shot over not weeks but years, and that the ‘office’ is just a green screen on a studio set. Hill lets the audience in his conceit, melting the smokescreen and agreeing to be more fluid in the pursuit of depth. At this point, his initial intent – of intending for Stutz to be an ode to his invincible therapist – makes way for the fact that Stutz is the legitimization of an invisible friendship. The rest of it occurs against the green screen, with no fake backgrounds, as if to imply that their bond is no longer shackled by the weight of image. The documentary only features the two men speaking to one another, and derives its meaning as much from the words as the silences and pauses between them. The way the camera focuses on Phil Stutz’s weathered face suggests that he’s precisely the sort of person who made a career out of reshaping strangers so that he could avoid shaping himself. Nobody thought to ask him how he’s feeling, until now.

In terms of form and adaptability, Stutz also reminded me of comedian Nathan Fielder’s visionary docu-series, The Rehearsal. Fielder helps ordinary people rehearse tough events – through the use of elaborate sets and hired actors – before they actually experience them. He hopes to prepare them for every possibility by recreating real situations, hence leaving nothing to chance and robbing life of its spontaneity. But he also doesn’t shy away from confessing from time to time that his process is perhaps flawed. It does not account for the burden and gift of humanity. Hill isn’t half as extreme in his quest to control the language of living. But there’s something to be said about how the man he looks up to has no qualms participating in a film that ultimately brings them closer. Hill is preparing himself for multiple outcomes through the making of Stutz, but none of them accounts for the fact that both men have been paid to perform over the years – Phil Stutz as a human, Jonah Hill as an artist. Both of them happen to be in the film they want us to watch. But both also just happen to be.

Rahul Desai is a film critic and programmer, who spends his spare time travelling to all the places from the movies he writes about.

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