Electric Malady
Electric Malady, the debut from Swedish-born, Glasgow-based filmmaker Marie Lidén, takes us inside the world of William, a painfully isolated man suffering from electromagnetic hypersensitivity
How do you visualise, or even explain, a condition that isn’t medically recognised or visibly caused by anything? Marie Lidén’s documentary on an isolated case of electrosensitivity uses the empathetic powers of filmmaking to connect us to William, who suffers an allergy to electricity and lives alone in a Swedish forest. His lifelines, largely his parents, have been tested greatly by the inexplicable illness, and doctors offer potential treatments and next steps.
Meanwhile, William stays hidden beneath a mass of blankets, putting a cake tin over his radio and expressing discomfort whenever Lidén’s presence causes it. His conviction for his unorthodox diagnosis is unwavering, but still there’s a vagueness to how it’s discussed by his circle. How do you articulate a pain that medical professionals won’t acknowledge, and therefore won’t treat?
The resonance of Electric Malady is in its deeply-felt humanism. If William is so clearly suffering debilitating, isolating pain, why is he not treated as someone with a disability? If he is fated to be the most knowledgeable about his condition, can he engineer a way out of it? The outside world is framed purposefully: home movies on distorted, scratchy film; a flock of birds buzzing through the sky that reminds us of the electrical presence plaguing William. It’s a delicate film, and sometimes you wish there could be something firmer to grasp about the condition, but it’s difficult to ask anything more of such an open, vulnerable subject. Electric Malady works as a quiet communion.
Out now via Conic; certificate 12A