Mental illness and addiction are having a moment in mainstream cinema.  Thank God.  It’s about damn time.

Touched With Fire is written and directed by Paul Dalio, who has severe Bipolar disorder.  It stars Katie Holmes, Luke Kirby and Christine Lahti.  Holmes and Kirby play Carla and Marco, who also goes by Luna.  They are both bipolar and both poets, and they meet when they are inpatients receiving treatment for their disorder.  The two fall in love and escape from the hospital, ultimately moving in together.  They become wildly manic in the euphoria of their love, but their relationship disintegrates as one chooses to take medication and one decides not to.

The movie is breathtaking.  From Marco’s disastrous apartment, metaphorically mirroring his chaotic mind and bottomless depression, to Carla’s frenetic energy and the incapacity of her hand to keep up with her racing thoughts as she tries to write a poem; from doctors who seem inaccessible and slightly disapproving to families who are caring and attentive but just don’t get it; from the wrestling that both Carla and Marco do with the decision to take medication to their chaotic, frenetic romance, it is an astonishing, and astonishingly accurate, portrayal of the bipolar world.  It also explores the connection between bipolar disorder and artistic talent, written about beautifully in Kay Redfield Jamison’s book also called Touched With Fire.

I found this movie very healing and somehow a great relief to watch.  To see their story unfold, their strong emotions and rash decisions and profound difficulties, all of which I could relate to intimately, was like seeing myself.  It’s an uplifting story that is ultimately about redemption and second chances.   I highly highly recommend this film, which is available to be ordered through most TV providers.

I Smile Back also came out in 2015 and stars Sarah Silverman in an anything but comedic role as Laney Brooks.  Laney is a suburban mother and wife with a nasty drinking problem, an even nastier drug problem, and a propensity to have anal sex in hotel rooms with her neighbor.  In a pivotal scene before Laney seeks treatment, she goes into her sleeping daughter’s room, drunk and high, and masturbates with a teddy beside the bed.  Laney goes to treatment and achieves a brief period of sobriety, along with some insight into herself.  A visit to her father throws her almost immediately back into old habits, though.

This is a gritty, visceral movie, not for the faint of heart.  The story isn’t pretty and the ending isn’t a happy one.  But it is worth watching for its sheer honesty, the way it holds nothing back.  It goes beyond what shows like Intervention do, into the rest of an addict’s crumbling life, and shows the shocking, pervasive destruction of addiction.  It is especially worth watching if you love someone who is addicted, because it so clearly shows that climbing out of the depths of addiction is a long process that is not usually linear, never pleasant, and never ever easy.

All of us struggling with mental illness or addiction should be grateful for these movies, I think, because those who see them can’t help but come away with a greater understanding of what we go through and hopefully, with greater compassion as well.