Girl Interrupted is a delicious exercise in self-indulgence

Rating: 6/10 (1 November 2000)

Anyone who has ever had an obsession, felt impulses to be drastic over something inconsequential, felt a bit out of place, or ever had in the back of their mind the sinking suspicion that they might be just a little bit crazy should see this film. Girl, Interrupted is rather self-indulgent, like watching children attack a bowl of Halloween candy, or witnessing family members playfully fighting over the last piece of pumpkin pie.

Is Girl Interrupted really saying crazy people are different from normal people? I don't think so. Alleged crazy people are normal people. They're the ones who say yes to thoughts that other people say no to. Borderlines are people thinking maybe.
Winona Ryder's character Susanna Kaysen (based on the author of the book) is the narrator of this story. It is her 'borderline' eyes that we are peering through. We learn that Susanna flushed a bottle of aspirin down with a bottle of vodka. This leads her parents into carefully goading her into locking herself up inside Claymoore: a mental hospital. She goes willingly but reluctantly, not really paying attention to anything because her mind is filled with echoes of the past, and she deludes herself into becoming delusional. Eventually she is diagnosed as a "borderline personality disorder." When compared to the other tenants on her ward in Claymoore however, the more appropriate phrase would be "psycho wanna-be."

Susanna's roommate is a pathological liar who is obsessed with the Oz series of books. Across the hallway is a girl who set herself on fire because she loved her cat. Another refuses to eat because 75 pounds is her ideal weight. So what we witness is a scared teenage girl in the late sixties surrounded by scared girls all rapidly turning into confused young women. We witness Susanna interrupting her own life for a year and a half in order to see in them what she has been, what she is, and what she might become if she crosses the borderline.
Then comes Lisa.
While Winona Ryder plays the tossed raft of this story upon which we skittishly cling, Angelina Jolie appears on the scene like a powerful stormy sea ready to capsize us, blow us off course, or merely keep us company while we navigate the rough waters. Jolie steals the limelight from Ryder while simultaneously making her look good. Ryder holds the show well enough in the start (much like Henry Winkler in the 1982 movie Night Shift before Michael Keaton's entrance), but Jolie's performance of the sociopathic and charismatic Lisa gives this production a needed jumpstart. It also gives us a chance to examine the proceedings from another perspective: Susanna's only just arrived, but Lisa Rowe's been there half her life. While Susanna's borderline, Lisa's already rocked her own boat so far she's drowning, and builds temporary flotation devices by demeaning those around her, but it leaves her dead inside. Somehow Jolie is able to present this hateful person in such a way as to make you want to punch her and hug the stuffing out of her at the same time.
Whoopi Goldberg is a steady rock. While the madness and childishness spreads and recedes like beached waves on an ebbing tide, Whoopi's performance of nurse Valerie lends us a consistent perspective of reason and duty. In one of the more powerful moments of the film, Valerie picks the drugged and lazy Susanna up out of bed and plops her down into a tub filled with cold water. Valerie then tells Susanna in no uncertain terms what we have already surmized by this point: Susanna doesn't belong here. She's not crazy now, but if she drops anchor in Claymoore, she eventually will be.

Girl, Interrupted is a powerful and moving film about what it means to be sane, what it means to be a social animal, and inevitably what it means to be human. It does get bogged down at times in the messages it tries to convey. Still, the performances of the talent supercede the sometimes preachy dialogue, and move the action along even those times when it appears the story's just running in circles.
The plot is not so much invented in a classic way. After all, this is based on real life, and Kaysen's book is a memoir - a diary. It's real. So there is no real beginning, middle and end. We're told basically why Susanna went in there, we experience some of the highs and lows of her stay, and she tries to show us why she got out. The first time I viewed the film, I found myself wondering towards the end when exactly was it going to end, and how. I was not personally satisfied with the rather ambiguous ending that was finally presented to me, but the slice of life presented to us is an ambiguous one, so ironically it seems fitting, if not satisfying by design. It's not some golden destination of sanity that this film focuses on, but the realization that being socially fit to function in society means to be a part of it, and so it is the journey that keeps us sane.

The rare references to The Wizard of Oz are just enough to bring light to the metaphor: Susanna is like Dorothy. The people she meets along the way are like the scarecrow, lion and tinman; friends on the journey to getting back out. Claymoore hospital is in a way a land of Oz, either a daydream or a nightmare, depending on how you look at it. And perspective, for someone who believes themselves insane, is everything.
Sanity is not a place, but a state of mind. And after seeing this movie, I was amused at myself: as if I need a film to tell me something that should be so incredibly obvious.