flawed but rewarding film

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2000)

The formula for `Girl, Interrupted' is to take the basic setting and plot situation of `One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,' strip them of their high-falutin' melodramatic elements and present a somewhat more realistic image of insanity hidden behind the walls of a mental institution. The risk in such a move is that the film will, also, strip away much of the drama as well. `Girl, Interrupted' takes the risk and, perhaps predictably, is not a completely satisfying effort as a result. Long stretches of the film turn into drawn out gabfests in which the girls housed in this Massachusetts institution talk out their issues at frequently excessive length. However, thanks to strong performances by an impressive cast of highly talented young actresses, as well as a script filled with occasionally sharp insights into the complexities of mental illness, the film ultimately yields a moving and rewarding cinematic experience for those with the patience to see it through to the end.
The film is based on the true-life story of Susanna Kaysen, a young woman who, like many young people in the turbulent 1960's, felt disoriented in the face of great social upheaval and the redefining of traditional roles and came to question her own place in society as a result. For a fumbled attempt at suicide, Susanna was ultimately consigned to a yearlong stay at a New England psychiatric hospital. It is her experiences there - and the relationships she forged with other women in her ward - that form the backbone of the film.
Several elements serve to undercut some of the credibility of the film. As overseen by an ever-sympathetic head nurse (Whoopi Goldberg), this ward seems woefully lax in its standards of both discipline and security. The girls seem to run freely and wildly through the corridors at all times, popping in and out of each other's rooms, talking disrespectfully to the staff on hand, entertaining strange young men in their rooms under direct gaze of the people who work there and even bolting from the place entirely with astonishing frequency. Moreover, the girls certainly do not seem to be kept very busy with either chores or therapy sessions and, as a result, we often wonder what exactly the therapeutic modus operandi of this hospital is. In a weak echo of `Cuckoo's Nest,' the girls are taken out into a public setting - an ice cream parlor - with predictably disastrous results. Even worse in that scene is the confrontation that occurs between Susanna and a friend of her parents who it seems has wised up to the fact that Susanna and her husband once had a sexual fling. The incredibility is not in the confrontation per se, but in the fact that this mother would make such an embarrassingly public scene right in front of her own understandably chagrined daughter.
On the whole, however, the film sports enough virtues of performances and writing to triumph over its flaws. Winona Ryder, in what might well be her finest performance to date, conveys the combination of melancholic wistfulness and hard-edged cynicism essential to her essentially decent but deeply troubled character. Neither the writers, Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan, nor writer/director James Mangold ever allow us to bank on the extent of Susanna's madness. Since she herself is never quite sure whether she is truly insane or just deeply depressed and emotionally confused, we are never given the opportunity to peg her with a pat diagnosis either. The same goes for her fellow inmates, particularly Lisa, stunningly portrayed by Angelina Jolie, whose often-lethal combination of beguiling charm and cold-blooded ruthlessness, keeps us as off balance as it does Susanna.
Certainly, mental illness is one of the most difficult conditions to render credible on the screen. The risks lie in either overstating the mannerisms and actions into seeming absurdity or of providing resolutions that ring hollow in their upbeat simplicity. `Girl, Interrupted' falls into both traps occasionally, but the fact that it is a work culled from a real person's personal experiences makes us more prone to accept it at face value. At times the girls seem too facile in their respective natures - one is a pathological liar, one a repressed lesbian, one a deceitful sociopath, one a self-deluded incest victim etc. - yet each character also contains her personal element of truth and validity. Only Whoopi Goldberg's anti-Nurse Ratched character rings untrue. Perhaps Goldberg has simply gone once too often to this particular well - that of the overly sympathetic authority figure dripping heartfelt sincerity all over the miserable and the hurting. As an actress, she has long ago lost her edge.
Still, for all its weaknesses, `Girl, Interrupted' emerges as a genuinely poignant and moving study of a group of hurting individuals groping towards each other for hope and understanding. For all the voices of reason shouting at us to question its authenticity, we find ourselves wanting desperately to believe in this unusual and thought-provoking tale