A fabulous, challenging film with incredible depth

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2000)

One-line summaries of this film often go something like this:

"The story of a girl's mistaken confinement to a mental institution."
I would argue that such a description misses the motivation behind Susanna's story. This film, fabulously acted, intricately directed, and taken from an intensely written memoir, is about the inner workings of a troubled mind - that of Susanna Kaysen.
This troubled mind knows that something in it doesn't work right, and wants to fix it. All levels of "Girl, Interrupted" speak to the us, the audience; it challenges us to search our own minds and discover the Susanna in us, challenges the very definition of sanity. In the end, it asks us: to what lengths will you go to become a part of 'accepted' society - and are the 'normal' really any better than the crazy people? To say that Susanna was mistakenly confined to a mental institution ignores the fact that every character at Claymoore was a true human being, whose story could have been told as effectively as Susanna's. That Susanna left Claymoore testifies only that she was able and willing to be healed - not that she never belonged there in the first place.
This is a challenging, dramatic, profoundly effective movie - the voice of the author cries out for understanding in a world driven by image and desperate for acceptance.