The Stimming Pool
The opportunity to open up the experience of neurodiversity is squandered in an experimental documentary.
Image courtesy of Dartmouth Films.
In theory this film should be cause for celebration being the first film made by a group known as The Neurocultures Collective. They are five in number and working with Steven Eastwood as a co-director they share the directorial credit for this film in addition to appearing on screen. This being their initial offering it would seem reasonable to suppose that their film would have two audiences in mind, those who like these five are neurodivergent and will be delighted to see themselves represented on screen and those not in that category for whom this will be an opportunity to learn more about it. The Stimming Pool is presented as a documentary, a genre well suited to such an aim, but the style of presentation is so offbeat that the film has widely been described as experimental. It may not be quite as extreme as some works that carry that label but what it does mean is that the style adopted obstructs any clear straightforward communication with the viewer. There is, of course, no reason why neurodivergent filmmakers should not choose to make a film in this mould but, since the subject is so rarely broached on screen, it seems bizarre to opt to handle it in the kind of movie which is only likely to appeal to a minority audience.
I approached this film with such limited knowledge of the subject that in addition to hoping to be informed by the movie I actually checked on the exact dictionary definition of ‘neurodiversity’ in addition to looking up ‘stimming’ a word that I had never come across before. I found neurodiversity described as the range of differences in individual brain function and behavioural traits regarded as part of normal variation in the human population. In addition, it indicated that it often relates to the autistic spectrum. As for ‘stimming' I learnt that it referred to making repetitive physical movements or vocalisations, a form of self-stimulation which is calming and therefore a coping mechanism.
For many spelling out the exact nature of neurodiversity may not be a necessity but, just as the film contains no commentary or voice-over of any kind, it opts to ignore the desirability for some of being given a description. Similarly, it never explains in words what stimming means although many will be unaware of it and its use proves to be central to the film’s climactic scene (it shows this kind of exercise being undertaken by a group in an empty swimming pool). It is at least clear that in the course of the film we meet its five directors appearing as themselves but this happens in a way that blends the realistic and the decidedly fanciful without truly making sense of either. Thus, The Stimming Pool has a preface shot in Hastings featuring one of the five, Robin Elliott-Knowles, who belongs to The B-movie Fan Club and hosts a cinema screening of a lost horror film. In warning his audience of how gory and unpleasant it will be, he introduces a comic note but none of this material appears to have any obvious relevance to being neurodivergent and that's still the case when late on the film returns to the screening and features an extract from the animated presentation which features an American union soldier and zombies as its main characters.
Once past the credits we are in a waiting room where we meet Sam Chown Ahern. Initially it remains naturalistic with Ahern awaiting a cognitive and diagnostic eye test which includes viewing videos which we see when she observes them. Within one such video we witness an office worker played by a neurodiverse performance artist from Venezuela, Dre Spisto, and later she reappears outside the video. But meanwhile in the same waiting room we see a mother with a child looking at a picture book about Chess the Border Collie, a dog who seeks to help the disabled. We subsequently encounter the book’s author Lucy Walker and in many scenes she appears with her face hidden being fully costumed to represent the collie of her invention.
We do, of course, get the point when the film goes out of its way to put us in the same position as those who are neurodiverse and have extreme sensitivity to sounds. It does this by turning up the sound level to replicate the fearsome sense of noise they find on a street with traffic or inside a busy pub. But for much of the time The Stimming Pool is marked by the lack of any clear narrative, indeed by a failure to provide any cohesion at all. The diverse elements include shots of undergrowth which might or might not link with the horror film, poetic views of the moon, a discussion that simultaneously seems to refer to the film being screened in Hastings and to this film which we are watching, a jokey reference to the Nazi character in the Mel Brooks film The Producers and views of an exercise room and of a supermarket when neither is functioning. Flung together like this what is shown seems pointless. Although it must have been made with the best of intentions, The Stimming Pool is unfortunately a film which totally fails when it comes to the one thing that is crucial: instead of opening up an understanding of what it truly means to be neurodiverse, the film save in those two scenes about noise levels never finds the ability to communicate it meaningfully.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Robin Elliot-Knowles, Sam Chown Ahern, Dre Spisto, Georgia Bradburn, Lucy Walker, Benjamin Brown, John Knowles, Elijah Baldwin, Kodie Morris-Dalmayne, Sebastian Gaigg, Tom Lepora, Sue Elliott.
Dir The Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles and Lucy Walker) and Steven Eastwood, Pro Chloe White and Steven Eastwood, Ph Gregory Oke, Ed Sergio Vega Borrego, Music Tom Haines.
Whalebone Films/Paradogs Films-Dartmouth Films.
67 mins. UK. 2024. UK Rel: 28 March 2025. Cert. 12A.
