She Unfolds By Day

By Benjamin Spacek

Sunday, June 15, 2008 | 10:18 p.m.

Director Rolf Belgum has a curious eye, and a curious imagination, so it stands to reason that She Unfolds By Day is a curious film. Ostensibly, it’s a documentary about dealing with his mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. Except that it isn’t.

Somewhere along the way, Belgum decided to experiment with adding fictional elements to the picture. There was minimal scripting, but while Belgum’s mother, Merrilyn, appears as herself, he cast a friend to play himself, and his sister to play a nurse. There’s also a significant role for the family dog, Jacques.

Further blurring the line between film styles is the use of non-narrative techniques. The central story revolves around family frictions between mother and son, their difficulty in finding a suitable living situation for her (nursing home, assisted living and, currently, in-home care) and her persistent wandering off and getting lost. The relationship of the dog to all of this cannot be understated.

This narrative segment consists of around 20 minutes of linear time, which is broken up into different angles and repeated, creating a kind of fractured perspective which acts as a reflection of the mother’s mind. The pieces of the puzzle are rearranged and repeated so that the viewer eventually gets a clearer idea of the whole picture. This portion of the approach works fairly well, but there’s even more experimentation to be found.

Among the shifting and recurring scenes are close-ups of insects and nature, as well as a dream sequence for one of the characters. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the audience picks up on the intended meaning of these last two facets, although the director was kind enough to explain his intentions after the screening.

One product of experimentation is that the results aren’t always desirable. The intentionally open ending of the narrative part of the film, as well as some of the metaphorical pieces, lead to questions about the responsibilities in dealing with mental illness. The only thing we know for sure is that dogs are loyal no matter what.