GIRL, INTERRUPTED

Getting this little bit of business out of the way, GIRL, INTERRUPTED is in many, many ways very similar to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST in that the leading mental patient is not so much insane but disenfranchised, and the supporting cast do their best with their lunacies. However, whereas ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST ended in tragedy, GIRL, INTERRUPTED ends with self-actualized hope.

Winona Ryder executive produces and stars in this late 1960s tale of a young woman named Susanna Kaysen, who finds herself at a mental institution and isn’t sure if she really is insane or not. Susanna becomes the object of her parents concern when she doesn’t come forward to receive her high school diploma in a prestigious northeastern community. Susanna is also discovered to be granting sexual favors to a friend of her fathers. After she chases a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka, Susanna is prescribed a “short rest” at a nearby mental institution for young women.

There, Susanna meets darker, more diseased personalities than her own. Georgina (Clea DuVall) is a compulsive liar, Polly (Elizabeth Moss) burns herself, and Lisa (Angelina Jolie) likes to stir the waters by compulsively revealing everybody’s deepest secrets. Susanna distrusts her fellow patients, but soon befriends them. She also mistrusts the staff, but discovers they are kind, especially Nurse Valerie (Whoopie Goldberg) and Dr. Wick (Vanessa Redgrave).

One day, an old boyfriend Tobias Jacobs (Jared Leto) comes to break her out. He is fleeing the draft and wants to go to Canada. Despite her distaste for the mental institution, Susanna realizes that this is not the way to leave. Nurse Valerie (Whoopie Goldberg) encourages her by telling her she is not a lifer and that she must respond to treatment so that she can get out. After Susanna and Lisa break out for a night, and witness a suicide, Susanna returns and finds the courage to pursue aggressive therapy with Dr. Wick so that she can go free.

Questioning the boundaries of freedom and confinement, friendship and betrayal, and madness and sanity, this movie features very strong acting performances by Ryder and Jolie. Though friends, they have opposite personalities, which result in many dramatic conflicts. Lisa is portrayed as a rebel, a leader with a cause to reveal everything dark about every person. She is considered a lifer, who is so absorbed in pushing everybody’s buttons that she doesn’t allow her own sins to be revealed and forgiven. Susanna wants to be free, she wants to be a writer, and she wants to be unique. These are wonderful goals, but she believes that her parents and the times when she lives squelch her desire to be a writer.

If Susanna’s illness is merely the result of confusion confounded by multiple sins, such as willful disobedience and sex, then Susanna doesn’t need treatment but wisdom and repentance. Her therapy primarily revolved around expressing her thoughts in her journal and to her therapist. Hence, she is a self-liberator. Everyone needs to co-operate in their own personal growth, but all gifts, including healing and forgiveness, are from God. (In a very passing moment, Susanna tells Lisa that she will pray for her, but it is unclear if it was sarcastic or not.) The whole impetus of sanity is geared towards self-actualization.

This movie has many obscenities by young women not in control of their own behaviors. It also features other acts of willful disobedience, some difficult talk about incest and the after affects of a hanging suicide. It is not an after-school special type movie, where young fans of Ryder or the other young actresses, can enjoy a sanitized view of insanity. With little sense of outside redemption and an unclear understanding of who actually gets better or how, this movie lacks some dramatic arc concerning a very fertile subject matter. Ryder displays bravery and courage with this complex role, but unfortunately lacks wisdom on the mechanics of inner healing.