Author and publisher Carl Seelig was from 1936 to 1956 the companion and legal guardian of the poet Robert Walser, who was incarcerated in a mental institution. Based on Seelig's extraordinary memoirs of their meetings, Percy Adlon's film "offers a series of provocative questions: Why did Seelig continue to maintain a relationship with a man who mainly refused to communicate with him?....Furthermore, was Walser -- whose critical reputation has risen sharply in the last few years -- really
schizophrenic, as diagnosed? Filmed against spare, breathtakingly beautiful winter landscapes, The Guardian and His Poet is a fascinating account of a most unusual friendship" (Richard Pena).