# Girl, Interrupted (1999)

### reviewed by
Shannon Patrick Sullivan

    GIRL, INTERRUPTED (1999) / ***

Directed by James Mangold. Screenplay by Mangold, Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on the book by Susanna Kaysen. Starring Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg. Running time: 147 minutes. Rated AA for mature subject matter and offensive language. Reviewed on February 28th, 2000.

    By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN

Shortly after her 1967 high school graduation, Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) nearly kills herself with a cocktail of aspirin and vodka. "I had a headache," she explains after being committed to the Claymoore mental hospital. But Susanna's brush with death is really symptomatic of the sheer aimlessness of her life. She is the only member of her class not heading off for college. While much of the United States is swept up in the furor of the Vietnam War, Susanna seems almost oblivious. So it is hardly surprising that someone so lacking in direction could allow control of her life to be handed to the doctors and nurses at Claymoore. At least now, direction will be forced on her if nothing else.

"Girl, Interrupted" is based on true events, depicted in Kaysen's book of the same title. Kaysen lost a year and a half of her life in a women's mental ward, and the film recounts the experiences which inspired Susanna to retake control of her own destiny.

Despite a lack of real incident, the first half of the movie is riveting. We are introduced to some of the other girls in Susanna's ward, including a disfigured young pyrophile named Polly (Elizabeth Moss); Susanna's roommate Georgina (Clea DuVall), who seeks refuge in the "Oz" books of L Frank Baum; and Daisy (Brittany Murphy), a woman with peculiar dietary beliefs. These characters are portrayed evenhandedly; their mental problems are neither sugarcoated nor demonized, and they seem real. Watching over everything is Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg), a stern but caring nurse who understands in minutes what the psychiatrists themselves never really figure out: that Susanna has come to Claymoore not for help, but simply to be. "Do not drop anchor here," Valerie warns Susanna, knowing that the doctors are perfectly content to keep her locked up forever. Since there is nothing really wrong with Susanna, how can she ever be cured?

Everything is stirred up by the arrival of Lisa (Angelina Jolie), an aggressive young woman who is no stranger to Claymoore. Despite the fact that Lisa herself has no desire to remain hospitalized (when we first meet her, she has just been recaptured after a two week absence), it is her presence which is Susanna's most attractive reason for staying in the asylum. Lisa plays the leader of the ragtag band of patients, taking them on secret midnight excursions through secret passages and into restricted areas of the hospital. For a time, Claymoore seems less like an insane asylum and more like summer camp. Of course, a mental ward is not summer camp, and eventually events conspire to remind Susanna of this fact. It is this reality -- and how Susanna reacts to it -- which comprises the film's second, more uneven half.

Much of "Girl, Interrupted" is a careful character study. We are witness to how insanity affects everyone from the delusional themselves, to those charged with their care, to the average people who by some happenstance come into contact with them. The film also observes how madness can be a relative and elusive concept. Some of Claymoore's patients have no business being there (Susanna herself, for instance), while some are there purely because of social tenets which today seem increasingly outdated (one woman's only "problem" is that she is a lesbian). But, more darkly, not all of those released and declared sane truly are, and this sets up the movie's most disturbing sequence.

Unfortunately, after an hour of terrific characterization and well-chosen set pieces, "Girl, Interrupted"'s final twenty minutes are a huge step backward into melodrama. These scenes feel awkwardly grafted onto the rest of the film, as though scriptwriters James Mangold (who also directed), Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan were afraid audiences would not be satisfied with a straightforward character study. Instead, the movie ends with a lot of contrived angst and, yes, even a chase scene (albeit one that is nicely photographed by Mangold).

The cast is well chosen; while it would be very easy to play any of the Claymoore inmates over the top, all the actors stay grounded in reality, and this lends authenticity to the picture. Jolie is terrific in a role that has already earned her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe award. Of all the characters, it is Lisa who could most easily have been taken too far, but Jolie knows her limits. It is clear that she is having a great deal of fun in the role; Jolie really gets her teeth into the part, portraying as much of Lisa's personality in her body language and the inflection of her voice as in her actual words and deeds. Ryder's performance, meanwhile, is understated but not bland, projecting Susanna's uncertainty and desperation while making it clear that she should never have been committed.

Denouement aside, "Girl, Interrupted" is an absorbing venture inside the walls of a mental institution. Both scripting and acting are up to the challenge of translating Kaysen's experiences convincingly onto the screen. Although it lacks the power and drama of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", to which it is perhaps most readily comparable, "Girl, Interrupted" should not be overlooked.

Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/GirlInterrupted.html

    --
      _______________________________________________________________________
     / Shannon Patrick Sullivan  | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \
    |                            |  are looking at the stars."                |
     \ shannon@morgan.ucs.mun.ca |                            -- Oscar Wilde /

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews