I met Joy Dietrich, writer/director of the feature doc Attachment Project, only moments after the awards ceremony had ended for the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis. The festival was the setting for the film's U.S. premiere, a sublimely appropriate festival for a hypnotic, jarring, and frequently uncomfortable documentary that demands to be seen.
Truthfully, while my experiences are far and away different from those of Dietrich, Attachment Project scared the crap out of me.
As someone who grew up with significant disabilities and deeply influenced by the cycles of both dysfunctional religion and abuse/violence, bonding has never really sort of been my thing. Using professional nurses as my model, I've lived life mostly from afar with a detached compassion that has allowed me to present as a loving human being with enough walls surrounding me that only the most persevering human dares to climb over them.
So, while my life is vastly different from Joy Dietrich's I very quickly felt a kinship with her.
Attachment Project largely centers around Dietrich herself, a successful filmmaker long estranged from her adoptive parents who sets out to visit them after a 20-year absence. However, Dietrich doesn't entirely center Attachment Project around herself. INstead, she also follows two fellow foreign-born adoptees as they experience novel, occasionally controversial therapies in an effort to better connect with their American families.
Meeting Dietrich upfront and prior to actually watching her film, I was struck by her quiet kindness. She is not, it would seem, "detached" from the human experience itself. She is proud of this film, as she should be, and actively pursuing those who will watch it with an open heart and mind to raise awareness.
Meeting Dietrich made me want to watch her film. Watching Attachment Project, for sure, would have made me want to meet Dietrich.
Dietrich was abandoned as a young child on the streets of South Korea. Adopted by a Texas family that would eventually relocate to a rural Indiana locale, Dietrich's sense of being an "other" was profound and it would continue through the experience of her adoptive parents disconnecting from her once she became an 18-year-old and was living out of the country as an exchange students.
It was as if these parents, and I admittedly am hesitant to call them parents, decided there work was done and they were doing no more. It was, at least in this writer's mind, an act of detached cruelty I'm not sure I'd be able to forgive.
It's likely unsurprising that this difficulty with attachment would follow Dietrich into her adult years, romantically and otherwise. It's also likely not surprising that these experiences, deeply influential on Dietrich's life, inspired this documentary and the deep, soulful work required of Dietrich for this documentary to begin to work.
The term Reactive Attachment Disorder, or RAD, is well known in trauma circles. A relatively rare "disorder," and I hate the word disorder, RAD is typically identified as a condition that develops when an infant or young child doesn't establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers and if the child's basic needs for comfort, affection, and nurturing aren't met.
In a wise approach, Attachment Project explores RAD, especially as it plays out for Dietrich and the film's two other subjects - Daniel and Tara.
Adopted from a Romanian orphanage at the age of seven, Daniel extremely primitive and abusive early childhood manifested even after he arrived within the safety of his new home in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite gaining economic stability and being free of the abuse that had plagued his early years, Daniel has struggled for years, at times even acting out violently, and is open in Attachment Project about his difficulty with relational attachments.
Attachment Project also introduces us to 16-year-old Tara, adopted as a child from China into a Columbus, Ohio family where her attachment disorder plays out more quietly. It's deceptive, Tara's tendencies more inward and expressed through depression. Tara's is no less an attachment disorder, though her behavior normalcy can appear deceptive.
While I have little difficulty saying that it's Dietrich's story that serves as the heart and soul of Attachment Project, the presence of both Daniel and Tara is vital here as it provides depth to Dietrich's storytelling and helps keep Attachment Project from ever coming off as a narcissistic artistic pursuit. Attachment Project is most certainly a cathartic effort for Dietrich, however, it's also a film with which I'd imagine many foster parents, foster children, adoptive parents, and adoptive children will intimately identify.
In my case, I am none of those things. I was, however, who spent my first several months of life in a full body cast and then somehow, miraculously, survived a birth defect for which I was given 3 days to survive at best. I am now in my 50's.
RAD is a difficult disorder to treat as is evidenced in Attachment Project. We witness treatments, at times controversial, and see evidence of approaches that are squirm-inducing. Dietrich's work here is exceptional, vulnerably exploring her world without ever turning this into a 90-minute "poor me" session. Dietrich's encounters with her long-estranged parents, now divorced, are stunning in their emotional impact and downright wallop.
Quite honestly, my heart broke for Dietrich and yet, perhaps brilliantly, I also understood this world she was trying to share with me and with anyone who views the film.
It feels weird to say that I loved Attachment Project. I'm not sure this is the type of film you love. It's the type of film that rattles you and shakes ysou and changes your world perspective. It's the kind of film that makes you want to hold the ones you love a little tighter and climb those walls for those in your world who may never feel the connection they so strongly desire.
Early in its festival journey, Attachment Project certainly isn't the easiest film to watch but it's an absolutely necessary film that should no doubt continue finding success on the indie fest circuit.
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
