I feel very guilty about loving this movie: A Subjective Review

Rating: 10/10 (21 April 2007)

Fine, I admit, despite the fact that I am anti-psychiatry in a way that would even put Tom Cruise to shame, I adore the idea of the mental hospital and related concepts within a fiction realm. Despite the fact I would probably kill myself, if I were committed in real life, if I had a holodeck from Star Trek, you could only guess the scenarios I'd be creating for myself. Okay, so I am biased. Mental Hospitals give me great me pleasures, even when I just think of them. It's something about a person being considered non-accountable and not of sound psyche as well as being worthy of confinement for just their demeanor and attitudes that I think with me really just strikes bunches of chords.
So, upon seeing a movie that did not only meet that but heterosexually fascination of women I immediately sought it out. However, such a non-sexual fetish as this is not something you would want to make public, so I naturally was very discrete in both how I reacted to this film and how I sought it out. I can't watch the movie without yelling at the characters, and I'm always afraid that someone at the library will wonder what a male like me is doing renting a movie like that with the amount of times I do.
So, what is the movie itself? Well, it's a women's late 1960s half melodrama/half "life passing as we adventure and experience the world" drama. It's very well-acted but the material is at time's cringe-worthy. What really makes the film is just how effectively it emobdies its setting and attitudes of the characters. As for the former we really feel like we're in a mental hospital. This isn't raving lunatics and great horrors. It's a locked summer camp for sane young adults, who were bought down by the man. This is the type of place I would find myself lying on my couch imagining I was in. In terms of the latter, you could never accuse the film of not developing its characters, because one of the things it does amazingly masterpiece level way is make clear the way that all the characters view their lives and situations. We really understand why they all do what they do and feel what they feel as well why they are in the positions they are in. It's tragic and it sucks you into the story like few other films have by crafting a portrait of people who seem real, for they might as well be real people (whom they were based off) because our understanding of them is great. Even, though I can objectively say that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a better film, the characters don't have anything on this movie.
This film has a lot that goes for it, but then again, it's just eaten up by me. There are so many ingredients for transcendent cinema here, and although I experience that because it is almost like a film made for me, I wouldn't know about that with other people. The thing is I couldn't possibly judge how a normal person would see this film. It's terribly manipulative and the ending is totally untrue. This is what they movies that are favorites but not best ofs.
Actually, when I think of it, if it weren't for that untrue ending and manipulation, this could have been a experience I could truly consider to be great. The vibrancy of the characters had a ridiculous amount going for them, and I could only (and do in my spare time) imagine how great it really could have been had the characters stayed truer to their nature. I really should write a fanfiction.