Heroic and redemptive

Rating: 9/10 (14 June 2000)

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
I tend to the sentimental, so the fact that I cried through most of the last twenty minutes of this touching and redemptive story of lost little women in the booby hatch doesn't mean much. This really isn't a tear-jerker as such, it's just that the material and the way it is handled made me feel such affection for those girls struggling so hard to be whole. Set in New England in the sixties with Vietnam in the background and free love in the streets, this is a fine film with an excellent cast that tells an original story without mawkish sentimentality or any pandering to the politically correct. The psychotherapeutic industry is not indicted, nor is society held over the coals. Everything is individual and the faults and failures are individual faults and failures, and the ultimate redemption or lack there of is also individual.
Winona Ryder gives a striking performance as 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen, writer to be who finds herself in a mental institution after a suicide attempt. Ryder, who has the expressive face of a silent film star, proves beyond any doubt that she is a gifted and tremendously hard working actress.
Trickster Angelina Jolie is fascinating in her academy-award winning supporting role as a kind of femme bad boy. Whoopi Goldberg as a Nurse Ratched with a heart, anchors the film and brings strength and rationality to the lives of the girls. Vanessa Redgrave, elegant and wise as Dr. Wick, a shrink with compassion and intelligence, serves as a counterbalance to Jeffrey Tambor's incompetent Dr. Potts.
Some have compared this to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) but this is an entirely different kind of movie. It has neither the range nor the outrageous humor of that great film. Director James Mangold, whose much admired Heavy (1995) showed what he can do, wisely attempts less here as he concentrates on the personal journey Susanna Kaysen takes to the brink of institutionalized insanity and back. He emphasizes how people can bond and show affection under dysfunctional circumstances, and how we can triumph over the darker aspects of our nature. In the final analysis, this is a heroic film and a tribute to those who rise above the demons in their souls.