- Studio: Fisher Klingenstein Films
- Release Date: May 25, 2012
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80OC87 serves both its subject and its viewers well by chronicling a process that is actually insightful, entertaining and apparently successful.
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80The film brings us vividly inside the life - and head - of its determined hero, Bud Clayman, as he depicts the process of what he calls "getting normal."
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75Through it all, Clayman struggles to keep himself, and OC87, on track - and it's easy to cheer his ultimate triumph.
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70An eye-opener about what it's like to live with a variety of mental illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder -- and, however tenuously, to recover from them.
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May 24, 201270This moving, penetrating documentary records his attempt to describe his conditions, confront them and learn to manage them.
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May 23, 201270To be sure, there are more artful and focused documentaries, but OC87 still stands as moving evidence that Clayman's trust in the value of the filmmaking process ultimately outweighed the extreme difficulty he says he has making even the smallest decisions.
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May 29, 201265Yet as viewers, we may instinctively crave more than what Clayman alone can offer us. Segments where he cedes screen time to others, including the bipolar General Hospital actor and mental-health advocate Maurice Benard, are a relief.
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May 24, 201263A tender, painful, and frustrating work of vulnerability, and because of this in some ways deflects critical commentary.
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60Clayman, who co-directed with filmmaker friends, is fascinating company.
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May 23, 201260The film's depiction of [Clayman's] reality is rendered with cinematic brio and forceful clarity.
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50It's unclear where the buck stops in terms of creative authority – at one point, Clayman complains that "the only thing I feel in control of is the money" – which renders OC87 at once a remarkable achievement, and a fatally compromised film.