'I Am Another You' & Its Exploration of Freedom

In I Am Another You, Chinese documentarist Nanfu Wang goes on a quest to find two things: one, elusive, that she’s missed her whole life, and the second her dream of another America, a free one, the America of Kerouac and Gump and Captain Fantastic. Ostensibly, she finds this in Dylan Olsen, a 22-year-old wild spirit, whom she follows in his Floridian street life with her camera. The result is visually, emotionally and intellectually stunning.

In documenting Dylan, Wang circumvents the voyeuristic nature of exploring homelessness and the divide between subject and object. Instead, she exposes a different problem, one that she readily acknowledges: that of privilege. It’s an immeasurable privilege to choose the street life, as Dylan says he has in Part I of the film, when you’re white, attractive, charming and well spoken. Wang’s subject has grown up in a loving home and dropped out of university. He has had the great luxury of choosing a romanticisable and romanticised life, closer to the agency of the beatnik way than to the helplessness of destitution and ostracisation that is reality for his counterparts who are nonwhite, did not receive a formal education or come from a broken home.

But when viewed through the lens of mental health (or is it mental health being viewed through the camera lens?), Dylan’s story takes on another life, stripped of its control. In Part II, Dylan’s lovely, lovely father John, tells the filmmaker and the audience that Dylan struggled with “mental illness” growing up (he doesn’t specify, but Dylan later mentions “schizophrenia” as one of the labels he eschews, and describes haunting hallucinations and paranoia), in parallel to using heroin and selling his prescriptions. This revelation slowly shifts Wang’s and our perception of “mental illness.” I use the quotes here because this term is controversial, a point that is particularly relevant to this film, which poses this: is the term “illness” itself just another means of othering individuals who do not fit into our prepackaged idea of normality, of acceptability?

Part III evidences that Dylan does have a choice, but it is not the one we thought. He can choose between attempting integration, wherein he will face labelling, judgement and ill-function, or he can live up to his immense potential, his creativity, his love and his compassion. The film makes no overt political statements, but surely shines a light on how the U.S. health system is failing with regards to mental health, an issue that is far from being novel or unknown. I suggest you get your eyes on this gem of a documentary and spend some time thinking about it. Wang’s contagious empathy, as well as her use of montage and sound, invites reflection as much as it does emotion and wonderment — a must-see.

10/10