Meneer Emmens, dertig jaar op zoek naar evenwicht

Many chronic psychiatric patients lose their original identity after years of being dependent on the totalitarian package of services provided by a mental hospital. Accomodation, medication, occupational therapy: everything has been taken care of. Mr.Emmens is an amiable and charming intellectual, but he can also be aggressive and lash out violently. For thirty years, he has been a patient of mental hospital 'Dennenoord'. In the film we see a retrospective of his life, before and after he was hospitalized. We return to his childhood years and to the reason for his condition: is it caused by his biological abnormalities or by his failed upbringing? The film examines the question as to which positive existence is possible in Mr. Emmens's institution life. Mr. Emmens's himself looks for the meaning of life by studying biology and history. Inside the hospital he has developed a strategy to work on a career as a savant, in order to avoid occupational therapy. His self-felt failure in social contacts with other people is sublimated in his love for animals. Nevertheless, he has been able to build up a friendship with his housemate, Mr. Klamer. The film also shows the development of the way of thinking of a patient with a psychiatric 'career' of thirty years. The striking thing is that the hierarchy of the institution is translated into Mr. Emmens's desire for leadership and social-Darwinian views, in which the law of the jungle also applies to society, according to Mr. Emmens. This film is the result of the IDFA scenario workshop 1989, under supervision of Igor Itzkov