Riveting. Simply riveting.

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2001)

Originally, I was going to proclaim Girl Interrupted as "a modern day 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'". Until I remembered that Girl takes place in the late 60's, and I believe that Cuckoo's Nest takes place in the 70's (although I could be wrong...) thus making the modern compliment a little confusing.
Both films deal with asylums and mental illness, but while Nicholson's character slowly slides into madness, Winona Ryder's character (Suzanna) slowly pulls herself out of it. Not that she was totally crazy anyway. She was withdrawn, introspective, and dissatisfied with her lot in life. One botched attempt at a suicide, and the next thing she knows, she's being introduced to everybody at a mental ward. She eventually befriends the women staying there... Daisy, a girl whom only eats chickens from her father's deli, and stores the bones beneath her bed... Polly, a perpetually happy girl whom burned half of her face off as a child... Valerie, a nurse with a very patient demeanor played by Whoopi Goldberg... and then there's Lisa, played by Angelina Jolie. Lisa is a rebel, and is constantly fighting with the doctors and nurses. At first this seems to be because she has everything figured out, and is too smart to be in a mental hospital. But as Suzanna and the audience later discover, that's not the case at all.

Suzanna and Lisa develop an uneasy friendship, and at the times when Lisa turns on Suzanna, the movie takes on a bit of a horror feel, such as the underground scene near the end. It also creates some hilarious scenes, like Suzanna's confrontation with a mother of one of her former classmates in the ice cream shop.
I wasn't aware that Girl Interrupted is actually based on the real life experience of writer Susanna Kaysen. This fact alone gives me even more respect for the film, as I imagine it may be quite difficult for her to revisit that time of her life.
Don't be fooled into thinking this is a "chick flick". True, 90% of the main characters are women, but this is a hard hitting movie that everybody can watch and come away with a slightly different perspective on life. As the tagline says... Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy. How true.