Ventura Durall's documentary "Supernatural" begins with a seemingly impossible premise: a young girl on the brink of death, medical science at its limits, and a distant healer who allegedly saved her life through telepathic intervention. From this extraordinary starting point, the film unfolds into a rich exploration of belief, family trauma, and human complexity.
The documentary follows Anna Alarcón, now a well-known Spanish actress, as she seeks to understand the man who she believes saved her life when she was 8 years old. Suffering from severe anorexia and attached to feeding tubes, young Anna seemed beyond medical help when her desperate parents contacted André Malby, a respected shaman. Without ever seeing Anna, Malby performed some ritual and sent medicinal powder, after which Anna began to recover. Decades later, her conviction in this miraculous intervention remains unshakable.
Durall masterfully structures the film around Anna's search for answers about the now-deceased Malby, a journey that leads her to his estranged son, Mathu. The contrast between them couldn't be more striking – Anna, the devoted believer in Malby's supernatural powers, and Mathu, a conventional doctor who rejected his father's path so completely that he pursued a career in orthodox medicine. Their confrontation becomes the film's narrative engine, though Durall wisely offers no simplistic resolution to the science-versus-spirituality debate, suggesting instead that both can coexist.
What makes "Supernatural" a true joy are the deeper layers of humanity exposed in the telling of this story. It's a film about closure and unresolved emotional burdens. Mathu left home at 18 and never returned, carrying his rejection of his father like a weight for decades. There's a famous Zen Buddhist parable about the great monk Tanzan and his disciple encountering a woman who cannot cross a stream. Tanzan carries her across, and later when his disciple criticizes this breaking of monastic rules, Tanzan replies: "I put her down. Why are you still carrying her?" Through Durall's gentle urging, we witness Mathu achieving some sense of this essential closure, one of the film's most rewarding insights.
Equally compelling is the documentary's subtle exploration of how we humans idealize gifted individuals despite their glaring flaws. Those who knew Malby acknowledge his extraordinary healing powers while admitting, when pressed, that he was a terrible husband and father – a hedonistic womanizer. This tension between a person's gifts and their human failings echoes throughout the film, reminding us of our tendency to separate the talent from the person, especially when we've benefited from their gifts.
Visually and intellectually satisfying, "Supernatural" tonally matches its subject matter perfectly, though perhaps it could have been tightened slightly in editing. Durall has crafted a thoughtful meditation that transcends its initial premise to touch on universal human experiences – our need for healing, our search for meaning, and our complex relationships with those who have profoundly influenced our lives.
The film ultimately suggests that like Anna and Mathu, we all navigate a world where the explainable and the mysterious coexist, reminding us that we humans are indeed myopic on every plane above our space and imaginary time.
