“True confidence is living in uncertainty and moving forward.” – Dr. Phil Stutz
The movie staring Jonah Hill and Dr. Phil Stutz was at first an attempt by Jonah to produce a documentary about his therapist, his teachings, and his tools which helped him get better. he did that, but it also evolved into a movie documenting the journey of both of them discovering themselves and dealing with their inner pains.
In the movie I didn’t see Phil as a doctor, but rather as Jonah’s friend who was able to connect with him and help him understand his decades old pain, to understand how he needed to deal with his self-image, how to feel his self-worth regardless of how people perceive him.
The movie also captured Phil talk about his childhood pain, the pain of losing his 3 years old brother when he was 9, and how that steered him to be a therapist, and pushed him to help people with their problems since he was a teenager.
When Dr. Stutz talked about “Part X”, “The Shadow”, “The Snapshot”, or “The Maze”, he was making analogies through which he was trying to explain the mysterious part of every human: our own consciousness, how do we receive the world around us and how do we experience it, and how do we deal with our own pain. every one spends his life trying to deal with inner pain created by people around him, and through this journey we evolve into our current states, hence we are a product of our constant fight against our pains.
I believe a good movie is like a good book, it is open for different interpretations and it leaves space for the viewer to draw his own conclusions from it. In that sense Stutz is a very good movie, and for that it is a recommended watch.