AllMovie

The seminal, early 20th century case that inspired Freud, Jung, and Lacan is fictionalized in director Julian P. Hobbs' fragmented account of one distinguished German judge's descent into schizophrenic madness and eventual incarceration in an insane asylum. Married at the turn of the century and subsequently appointed a high judge, Daniel Paul Schreber would later suffer through multiple failed pregnancies alongside his wife (Lara Milian), attempt to navigate a particularly rocky relationship with his uncaring father (Joe Coleman), and suffer through woefully misguided care at the hands of questionably competent Dr. Emil Flechsig (Robert Cucuzza). Later imagining that he had been chosen by God to create a new race of man, Schreber's mental health quickly deteriorated into a cosmic paranoia highlighted by frighteningly vivid and unusually ordered hallucinations.