Has an Unusual Edge of Believability

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2002)

This is a movie about an intelligent person with schizophrenia. Rather than showing schizophrenia from the perspective of an outside observer, this film uses the perspective of the person with schizophrenia. As the film progresses, you wonder where the schizophrenia kicks in, even though it already has without your knowledge.
As well as this film works as a film, it is very much fantasy. Contrary to what the film leads viewers to believe, schizophrenics don't just will themselves to sanity of some sort. And the depiction of schizophrenia as another dimension that looks just as real as real life is something I doubt the accuracy of, having seen schizophrenia in real people up close and personal.
That being said, this is a good film about a rather extraordinary person. It's a story about someone who beats all the odds and who overcomes great adversity and emerges with their dignity intact, getting everything they dreamed of, but not at all in the expected way.
In short, it's an emotional story tempered by reality's shortcomings, which gives in an unusual edge of believability and which makes the highs and lows higher and lower than usual.