“The Quest for Sleep”

Abramorama and Osmosis Films
Reviewed for Filmfactual.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten
Director: Rachel Mills
Screenwriter: Josh Adler
Cast: Olivia Spencer (narrator); Andre Iguodala, Emma Coburn, Rick Lynch, Dayna A. Johnson, Meeta Singh, Michael Grandner
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/12/22
Opens: March 16, 2022

We may not be a nation of shepherds, but a lot of sheep are being counted in our country, and the wooly animals are not doing much good. Many of us are getting by on four hours sleep, although getting by is an exaggeration. Some of the folks discussing their sleep problems in director Rachel Mills’s “The Quest for Sleep” are fully aware of the dangers they are creating for themselves and others, particularly by falling asleep at the wheel. And college students, under great pressure to succeed in our competitive society, may pull all-night study sessions, not taking the advice of one professional in this documentary; that sleep consolidates memory and that presumably if you get your eight hours before the test and have prepared days in advance, you’re more likely to score high.

One of the director’s previous contributions, “The Magnitudinous Illuminous,” is about a 66-year-old bartender-philosopher in Brooklyn who would give his customers lessons on how to live a creative life, but she may have fallen asleep after filming for twelve minutes. This time Mills is up to seventy-three minutes, knocking out a doc that some viewers will itself consider a remedy for insomnia—especially if they do not manage to complete the watch. Others (like me) may note that there’s nothing in this soporific documentary that you don’t already know if you were as interested in the science of sleep to choose to attend this movie, though there are cool picture of the brain where things are going on—in most people.

The principal gem of wisdom that overlooks the project is this: that human beings like other animals need three things in life: oxygen, food, and the “s” word. Sleep. As the talking heads note, that you simply cannot do a competent job if you consistently enjoy fewer than six hours, which may explain the problems facing this country under the leadership of a man whose mornings were taken up with watching “Fox and his Friends.” (This point is not made in the doc, for some reason. Must have slipped the mind of the creative people like writer Josh Adler.)

So we hear from a military man, a night club singer who tries to stay aware enough to keep his day job; a beautician who notes that it doesn’t matter how well she does women’s hair, that it’s her relationship with customers; and a fellow who moved to Costa Rica, married a local, and works on wind tunnels when he’s not feeding the adopted dogs.

The usual solutions are listed. Meditation (but not yoga?); turning the lights down when you’re ready for bedtime and putting them back up when you arise; drugs, include caffeine drinks, which may cause dependency and solve the insomnia problem only sometimes.

There’s not a helluva lot of enlightenment here and what’s more, the intrusive, tinkling music that seeks to drown out the performers’ words of wisdom can drive some viewers crazy. Is this movie a concert or a treatise on the zzzzs? The movie premiered as a live Facebook performance on March 16th.

73 minutes. © 2022 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Story – C
Acting – B
Technical – B
Overall – C+