http://neurology.thelancet.com Vol 6 June 2007 485

In Context

FilmSleeping is the enemy“Over the years I’ve tried to cry myself to sleep, drink myself to sleep, aromatherapy, changing mattresses, changing pillows, lavender beads, massage therapy, white noise, meditation, counting sheep (I lose interest after a couple of hundred), melatonin, valerian root, acupuncture, acupressure, camomile tea, warm milk, hypnosis, yoga, homeopathic medicines, marijuana, lots of sex, hot baths, herbal teas.” And here’s the really bad news: none of it works—the man still can’t sleep.

This nocturnal litany is taken from Alan Berliner’s Wide Awake, a highly personal account of the fi lmmaker’s long-running battle with insomnia, screened at the 2006 Sheffi eld International Documentary Film Festival. “Either I have trouble falling asleep,” explains the perpetually unshaven New Yorker, “or I wake up early and can’t get back to sleep.” It follows that Berliner’s natural state is one of acute tiredness: “it’s like having a permanent cold,” he says, mournfully.

To recreate the insomniac’s insane loneliness, Berliner cuts together material from his vast library of archive footage. Dizzying montages consisting of clips from 1950s educational fi lms and television shows, silent comedies and B-movies explode onto the screen. It’s a highly eff ective technique, mimicking the whirling thought processes of the sleepless. Even worse, Berliner reveals, the mind’s nightly peregrinations can be accompanied by a soundtrack. He recalls an occasion when a couplet from a Leonard Cohen ballad looped mercilessly through his brain, adding “there are some songs, even some albums, I’m afraid of.” Then, there’s the problem of his pulse: “it feels as if there’s a woodpecker underneath my pillow,” Berliner dramatically proclaims. “How come you can’t hear your carotid artery?” he tetchily quizzes his consultant. “I can. I just don’t pay attention to it,” comes the good-natured response. For the sleep-deprived director, respite only arrives in tablet form: “I’ve been taking sleeping pills for years,” he sheepishly admits.

Wide Awake cites studies that suggest the results of baseball’s World Series are infl uenced by the direction in which the respective teams travel, and the consequent jet lag. Tiredness is a major cause of road accidents, from falling asleep at the wheel to the less easily mapped instances of human error. Indeed, Berliner points out that sleeplessness has an impact on driving that is directly comparable with the eff ects of alcohol. Sleep starvation also

occupies a prominent place in the armoury of the torturer; its unique potential for destabilising and enervating is long recognised by those versed in the practice of cruelty.

Berliner describes his situation with a neatly visceral metaphor: “If you boil a frog slowly, it doesn’t know [that] anything’s wrong.” But there’s more to it than this. The middle-aged fi lmmaker is unshakeably convinced that his artistic powers come out only after dark: “If I have something important to do, I do it at night.” He worries that were he to learn how to sleep, he will unlearn how to create. “There’s plenty of time for sleep after I die,” he repeats, with somewhat excessive satisfaction, during one of his press-conference-style addresses to camera. The press-conference eff ect is heightened by Berliner’s appearance: the bleached and bleary look of an exhausted athlete.

Partway through Wide Awake, Berliner’s wife gives birth to their fi rst child: Eli. The new father now faces a stark choice: coordinate sleeping arrangements with his spouse and son, or risk alienating one and disappointing the other. Eli’s entry also marks the moment where, cinematically, things start to slide. For a while, Wide Awake even begins to resemble a home movie, replete with shots of the new arrival yawning and suchlike. Berliner’s consummate self-absorption had hitherto been strangely appropriate to his subject matter; insomnia isolates—witness F Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that “every man’s insomnia is as diff erent from his neighbour’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.” That a fi lm performs a quasi-therapeutic function for its maker need not erode its worth; however, so accustomed does Berliner become to unveiling his innermost thoughts that he becomes a bit of a bore, fretting ceaselessly about his son’s sleeping habits. Fortunately for the viewer, Berliner’s exasperated mother and sister are on hand to dispute his stubborn obsessions.

“Sleeping is no mean art,” affi rms Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But suppose sleeping means no art? It’s a risk that Alan Berliner seems willing to take. Wide Awake concludes with the care-worn director promising an end to his life as a night owl. From now on, he intends to match his family’s sleeping patterns. Excellent. Just one question: how?

Talha Burkit_burki@yahoo.co.uk

Wide AwakeDirected by Alan Berliner2006, USA, 79 minsWide Awake: shown on HBO (US cable television) in May 2007.

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