Content warning: mentions of murder, assault and schizophrenia.
I have been reviewing the Ann Arbor Film Festival for four years now. This year, I was nervous walking into the theater: In the past, I have experienced movies carrying no plot, non-English dialogue without subtitles, and sometimes even no words. To my complete shock, however, the film I hesitantly chose to review this year far surpassed my expectations. “Billy” is a huge step-up from the past three years. I can’t tell if the movie was great or if my expectations were buried so deep in the floor that anything in comparison would have seemed great, but I can make strong arguments for an interesting plot, artistic imagery and a valuable message.
“Billy” is a feature-length documentary following Billy Poulin, a man who experiences a downward spiral into a schizophrenic state over the course of the film. The film was made by director Lawrence Côté-Collins (“Écartée”), who had met Billy at the peak of his struggle with undiagnosed schizophrenia. They were friendly acquaintances until he came onto her and assaulted her at a party. This behavior was not unnatural for Billy: From theft to forcing a girl to kiss him to eventually committing murders, he often struggled with violent tendencies. After the attack, Côté-Collins stayed out of contact with Billy for years, but when she heard that he was going to prison for murder, she reached back out. Côté-Collins visited Billy repeatedly, working on controlling his schizophrenia and filming documentary footage in hopes of shedding light on the dangers of untreated mental illnesses in prison systems.
In “Billy,” Côté-Collins combines this footage with Billy’s own documentation of his mental illness. Prior to his imprisonment, Billy had spent years recording vlogs of himself, where he was shown forcing his ideologies onto viewers, performing violent skits and scaring people around him with creepy masks and unnerving stuffed animals. In some specific videos, Billy was breathing fire, placing a doll head under a car tire and having a public meltdown at a talent show. By incorporating this footage alongside her own, Côté-Collins paints a full picture of Billy’s complicated inner world.
Probably the most commendable aspect of “Billy” is Côté-Collins’ bravery and resilience. Not only was she strong enough to reach back out to her attacker, but she also helped him make significant strides toward recovery. Many people, her own mother being one of them, questioned why she would show her attacker such compassion. “Every mom in the world would want someone looking after their sick child,” Côté-Collins responded. She also highlighted the immense progress Billy had made since his first vlogs. By the end of the documentary, she had finally reconnected with Billy in person, arm around his shoulder without a chaperone, in his cell — showing audiences that if she could feel comfortable around her previous attacker, there is potential for other victims to find that same level of closure, regardless of how they process their individual experience.
I loved the inclusion of Billy’s narration from prison, often dubbed over animations that helped bring his vivid testimonies to life. He spoke so eloquently, often depicting his mental state through metaphors that immersed me in his hardships. It was also a smart move on Côté-Collins’ end: We are introduced to Billy as a serial murderer, but by allowing him to explain his inner struggles, the audience softens from viewing him as a killer to a troubled soul in need of treatment, failed by the legal system. The animations accompanying his narration mirrored the dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish state Billy constantly resided in, and I could feel the overwhelming mental suffocation from his cries for help: “I was so ravaged by illness it took two deaths for society to notice how sick I was.”
In his narration, Billy mentions that he was “unraveling,” and he thought “everyone was psychologically deranged and some people dealt with it better” than he did. He described his schizophrenic episodes like water: They enter “every pore of your skin and leak.” He expressed how badly he wanted to be healed, saying he “could’ve gone so far in life but instead (he) went far in (his) head.” There were many pre-treatment quotes from his vlog clips, like “people say I’m like God,” which contrast so heavily with his post-treatment quotes, like “I’m in jail because I never loved anyone.” It shows just how far he’s come with Côté-Collins’ help, and the journey is beautiful to witness.
While the vlog clips were essential to show Billy’s development, the clips became somewhat repetitive after a while. The film neared two hours, which wasn’t necessary. My attention was lost a little towards the middle because I felt I had seen too many similar clips of Billy’s pre-treatment mania. But overall, I was very impressed with “Billy.” Someone working for AAFF needs to take notes and emulate this energy for all future film selections. After apologizing to the victim’s families, the film ends on a touching scene in which Billy has a moment of clarity while sitting next to Lawrence, stating that “you give me the will to live.”
Daily Arts Writer Zara Manna can be reached at zaraam@umich.edu.
