Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies is a landmark of cinéma vérité. It documents the day to day routines within Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Bridgewater, a mental hospital for the criminally insane. What is most striking about Wiseman’s film however is how quiet this movie is. True to vérité style, the film never showcases anything as above ordinary, makes no judgment calls for the spectator. It challenges our sense of the everyday by forcing us to observe, and to wonder, what constitutes everyday life at a mental hospital for criminals. Its focus is on violence that is as daily as the newspaper, the unspectacular coercion by which the institution maintains itself. It is the incredible accomplishment of the film to incite the viewer
