Coming Apart

1969

Action / Drama

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 73% · 8 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 73% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.5/10 10 567 567

mental breakdown hidden camera mockumentary psychiatrist fake documentary found footage

Plot summary

A psychiatrist secretly films his female patients as an experiment; he pushes both him and his customers in ways that induce his own mental breakdown.

720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
1023.58 MB
1280*764
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 51 min
Seeds 1
1.86 GB
1808*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 51 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by MichaelCarmichaelsCar

Impossible to look away

The conceit of 'Coming Apart' is that the film is footage from a hidden camera placed by a married psychiatrist in his Manhattan flat-away-from-home to document sexual encounters with various women, as a way (perhaps) of rebutting against the mistress who broke his heart and not incidentally lives in the same building.Rip Torn is the psychiatrist, Joe Glassman, Viveca Lindfors is the mistress, Monica, and Sally Kirkland is a young former patient, Joanne, slowly coming unhinged and projecting her failures onto Joe.In its voyeurism and genuinely objective cinema vérité style (the camera never moves, unless Joe is positioning it for another encounter), it resembles some of the films of Andy Warhol, but this is more resonant because Warhol's films depicted a counterculture, while this one depicts something closer to normal. 'Coming Apart' is absolutely gripping and fascinating to watch in a way that most ordinary films, edited and filmed with a point-of-view, are not. The camera just sits there, the scenes unfold, and I entered a sort of hypnotic state. The movie makes a clear illustration of the function of cinema as voyeurism, and also a convincing argument for voyeurism as the purest form of truth on film. The filmmaker, Milton Moses Ginsberg, has made a movie predicated as much on film theory as on personal experiences. In the latter respect, it is uninhibitedly candid, and often very painful. The actors give performances that are naked and free of affect, and this is particularly true of Sally Kirkland, who is barer here than any of Lars von Trier's heroines, and it's a brave performance.Because the dramatic elements are so intense and effective, this is not merely an exercise or an experiment, because it transcends its form. The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed at times, but it isn't unsuccessful. Joe is the ultimate self-reflective individual, looking inward, looking at himself, filming himself, somehow vacant and lacking a distinguishable personality, with a large mirror behind the couch on which he sits (a courtesy to the viewer, as well) -- how could his surname be anything other than "Glassman"? That he is a psychiatrist adds another layer of provocation. A vicious cycle is depicted. Joe's instability makes it impossible for him to responsibly treat his patients, and the instability of his patients makes sexual intimacy with them dangerous to his own already fragile psychological state.The movie is not perfect, and it gradually introduces jump cuts (accompanied by a thundering snapping sound) and presents the final scene in slow-motion. While these things are dramatically effective, they are inconsistent with the parameters established by the movie's conceptual conceit and therefore constitute a severe flaw -- being, the introduction of a point-of-view, of a director's manipulation of the material. While it can't be overlooked, it can be excused, I think, in the face of this extraordinary film's many other merits.'Coming Apart' was not well-received, yet I think it would have been were it a European film. There are things that European filmmakers can get away with but American filmmakers cannot, and 'Coming Apart' is daring, penetrating, and probably, in its way, ahead of its time. Sadly, it was buried for over 25 years and Milton Moses Ginsberg had to settle for a career as an editor. This is unfortunate, as I'd love to see the filmmaking career he might have had.
Reviewed by jameselliot-1 7 / 10

Experimental cinema with an impact

Coming Apart has the kind of format and style that virtually guaranteed failure in finding distribution and a mainstream audience. We are conditioned by traditional film-making that use formal editing techniques and camera work to tell a story with a plot, a formal beginning and a formal ending and when a film goes against an accepted style, critics and audiences can't understand it. This entire film is the result of a hidden camera (in a piece of artwork) facing a couch and behind the couch, a wall-sized mirror that reflects his windows overlooking a Manhattan skyline. This device minimizes the inherent claustrophobia of just photographing a man sitting on his couch. It is never explained why he is doing this. The 60s was the decade of the grindhouse sexploitation film, the precursor to hardcore porn. They could be divided into three categories. The nudies, the ghoulies and the roughies. Coming Apart superficially resembles a sexploitation roughie--grim, moody, downbeat, shot in black & white featuring bizarre personalities and twisted sexuality. The roughies showed women being routinely slapped around, raped and verbally abused. But there are art-house and technically experimental film-making aspirations in Coming Apart that make it far more than a psycho-drama. The near static presentation could have been a filmed stage play. A young Sally Kirkland gives one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. Her tirade at the end is hypnotic in its non-theatrical realism and ferocity. (I had to watch it several times.) Rip Torn is a master at brutal outbursts, the cold manipulation of women and a troubled, savagely tempered personality. He's perfect for the role of a psychiatrist who manipulates every woman who enters his sphere of orbit for his own uses, and not just for sex, but for some kind of perverse control and personal power. (Like in traditional sexploitation films, the men have sex with their underwear on.) Ginsburg says in the extras that the film was carefully scripted yet the dialogue sounds improvised and spontaneous. Sally tells Glassman that he "treats women like castrating women treat men." This one line is the key to the film. The lightbulb moment came to me about 20 minutes in. This movie foreshadowed, by over 30 years, the YouTube generation of millions of people at their computers recording themselves in a room with a video web-camera.
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