PREGAME THOUGHTS

Based on a true story. I had seen this Movie once before back in 2011, when I was 23. This movie had been in the back of my mind for a decade for one reason and one reason only: Winona Ryder’s whole appearance, especially her haircut, had spurred the second-biggest movie crush I ever had in my whole life. The BIGGEST movie crush I ever had in my whole life, of course, was Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams. I was three years old at that time and I never, ever recovered from it.

12 years ago I saw this movie. Almost as much time has passed between 1999 and 2011. I don’t remember much about Girl, Interrupted anymore other than I thought it was ok at the time. I completely forgot that Jared Leto, Whoopi Goldberg, and Elisabeth Moss were even in it. I was flipping through Netflix and stumbled upon it again, so I’ll give it another go. Now that my fiery passion for 1999-era Winona Ryder has calmed down, let me actually watch it and pay more attention to it this time!

THE 300(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Welcome to 1967. Winona Ryder plays Susanna Kaysen, a troubled recent high school graduate. After a nervous breakdown and an overdose of aspirin/alcohol, she gets forcibly checked into a psychiatric hospital with all sorts of crazy characters! Brittany Murphy (Daisy) is an OCD-addled, laxative-addicted, suicidal nervous nelly! Clea Duvall (Georgia) is a pathological liar! Elisabeth Moss (Polly) is a schizophrenic burn victim! Oh man, and here comes trouble: Angelina Jolie is Lisa, a manipulative, dangerous sociopath! She forms a bond with Susanna, who spends most of the movie jumpy and wary.

Most of the movie follows Susanna’s daily life in the institution as she spends her 18-month sentence “recovering”. Frequent therapy sessions reveal Susanna’s diagnosis as borderline personality disorder, aka teenage promiscuity and lack of ambition, honestly. Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg), the head nurse, bounces between tough love and sympathetic kindness as Susanna continuously pushes her buttons. Lisa’s influence has causes Susanna to be hostile and uncooperative during the first few months of her stay.

Jared Leto plays Susanna’s sort of boyfriend. They had a fling and we learn he was likely going to get drafted into the military and die in Vietnam. That didn’t happen though. He shows up at the institution to try and goad Susanna into running away to Canada with him. She declines, having grown attached to many of her fellow psychiatric hospital inmates.

After a pretty grim scene where Susanna and Lisa break out for an evening to visit the newly-released Daisy. Lisa spends much of the evening ridiculing her, pushing her to suicide. This causes Susanna to drift apart from Lisa and, afraid of becoming like her, starts taking her stay at the hospital seriously.

Eventually, Lisa starts enacting revenge against Susanna for breaking things off. This culminates in a confrontational scene where Susanna stands up for herself and Lisa contemplates killing herself. She doesn’t! But, later, before Susanna is released, they patch things up. Bada bing bada boom.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Critical Opinion

I found it odd that Girl, Interrupted received both mixed reviews and four different awards for Angelina Jolie’s performance. This tells me that, according to opinion, Angelina Jolie was the movie’s only saving grace. Rotten Tomatoes shows a critics’ score of 53%. The average user score is 84%.

While my opinions of Winona Ryder as an actor aren’t terribly high, she did ok as an angsty, troubled teenager who was suddenly whisked away for no reason to live in a mental institution for 18 months. I have nothing negative to say about any of the rest of the supporting cast.

Except maybe Jared Leto because, uh, it’s fucking Jared Leto.

Most of the criticism stems from the movie’s predictability and its less-than-satisfactory adaptation from the book. I can’t speak about the book, but I imagine the real Susanna Kaysen included a lot more social commentary in her memoirs. One watches the movie and possibly understands the misogynist message with respect to a woman’s mental health in the 60s. There was nothing about Susanna’s mental state that couldn’t have been worked on with weekly therapy sessions, obviously, and the same could be said for almost the rest of them. Maybe not Elisabeth Moss’ character, Polly, the schizophrenic who attempted suicide by setting herself on fire. The fact they were all dragged out of society instead shows the unwillingness to actually treat them as human beings.

The movie doesn’t do a very good job with presenting this particular theme. They instead focus more on Angelina Jolie’s “villainous” Lisa character and how the rest of the institution, staff and patients, deals with her. This includes solitary confinement, attempted ostracization, electro-shock therapy, all that fun stuff. Obviously a little excessive, but Jolie’s resistant reactions to these treatments and her petty, mean behavior toward everyone takes the front seat to the social commentary.

As far as predictability, I don’t think that detracts from the movie. You can see Brittany Murphy’s character’s suicide coming a mile away, but it’s still a shocking scene. Perhaps the last confrontation between Susanna and Lisa in the tunnels was both over-the-top and unrealistic, but what would you really expect from Lisa hearing (in very blunt fashion) everything about herself that she doesn’t actually want to think about? Sometimes predictability is better than a twist when it comes to interpersonal relationships.

TOPIC 2 — Mental Illness

As someone who literally takes four different types of medication right now to curb anxiety and depression like some sort of UNSTABLE LUNATIC who should be DRAGGED OUT ONTO FIFTH AVENUE and shot in the face by FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, I found the movie’s portrayal of mental illness to be sympathetic instead of, you know, “heh heh look how CRAZY these women are, ha ha, WOOOOO”!

I know most people are self-conscious about the mental problems they may have, and I personally don’t give much of a shit what people think about me, but I imagine that I’d want to keep it all to myself if I were living in the 1960s right now. It sounds like professionals weren’t particularly helpful, and the only thing Susanna learned while she was checked-in was to get over herself a little bit and lighten up. That’s all she needed to do. Obviously, Brittany Murphy’s Daisy was checked-out prematurely.

With Susanna as the focus, having been eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, her mood swings and shiftlessness are explainable. Here’s what else is explainable about it: she’s still a teenager. A teenager with no sense of direction after high school. A teenager with no sense of direction after high school, leading to impulsivity, poor coping mechanisms, and dangerously poor self-worth. SEE! Give me my professional license!

(Note: I am in no way pretending to be any sort of psychologist of any form whatsoever. I took two classes in college. I don’t even know where the brain is located in the body!)

I’m not diminishing the diagnosis. I’m saying that there very obvious, easy things to look into to help her before throwing her in mental health jail!

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Angelina Jolie avoided any communication with Winona Ryder when making the movie, claiming that if she saw anything human about Ryder, she would not have been able to act out the sociopath character Lisa Rowe as effectively.
Oh, I see. “Method acting”. I was confused at first, since this is how I treat my coworkers on a daily basis. Except I don’t have to worry too much about the “see anything human” part.

The ice cream parlor the girls visit is Eckels Soda Fountain in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The store even has a “Girl, Interrupted” sundae.
The sundae is mostly nuts! Hahahaha! Get it?!?! MOSTLY NUTS!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!!!!

Angelina Jolie revealed in an interview that she genuinely thought she was the only character who was sane in the entire film, and that’s how she played it. She said, “I was actually almost upset when people said I was so good at playing insane because I never thought she was insane. She was just incredibly honest, which, I guess, made her seem crazy.”
Yeah, sure, Jolie. Sounds like you just accidentally admitted that you avoided talking to Ryder for reasons other than “acting out a sociopathic character” to me. Pick a lane.

Courtney Love auditioned for the role of the sociopath Lisa Rowe.
Wouldn’t that have been something? She wouldn’t have had to act at all!

At the beginning of the film, Susanna (Winona Ryder) ponders: “Have you ever stolen something when you had the cash?”. Winona Ryder was convicted of shoplifting in 2002 after stealing close to $6000 worth of merchandise.
Yeah and she’s still a fucking baller for that move. Capitalism can go fuck itself, I agree. I’m only more attracted to her now.

Winona Ryder, Whoopi Goldberg and Kurtwood Smith all had at least one appearance in the Star Trek universe.
NERDS!

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Maybe. There’s nothing essential except to see the hubbub about Jolie’s performance. From what I’ve read, it is advised to check out Kaysen’s book instead, which hits upon the points in a more direct and thought-provoking way.

And there are other movies that do a better job with topic of mental illness. I’m told. And when I actually watch any of them, you will be the first to know.

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