Girl, Interrupted

Plot synopsis:
"Maybe I really was crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted."Susanna is a young woman of eighteen, and her life isn't exactly what a "normal' eighteen-year-old's is suppose to be like. To her, any kind of sex is casual, and it doesn't matter
who she does it with or when, as long as she gets it.At graduation she falls asleep, proving she has little interest for the norms of prize-givings or anything to do with what's accepted by
society. At her father's birthday
party she is under dressed and is of course moaned at by her hypocritical mother. Here
we learn that her parent's friends are just as false as what is accepted by everyone. And
then it becomes clear that Susanna has been sleeping with her mother's friend's husband.This drives her to try to commit suicide with aspirin and a bottle of vodka to get it all down.
At the E.R. she claims that she doesn't have bones in her wrists anymore, and tells the
psychiatrist at home that the bones grew back by the time she got to the hospital.So she is shipped off to a local mental institution and put in the ward for women only. Here she meets a multitude of people who really do have problems: an anorexic, a girl
who burned herself as a child, a lesbian (at the time was thought of as a mental disorder), a bulimic, and her roommate, a compulsive liar, to top it all
off.The ward is run by Nurse Valerie Owens, who is very clever, but is unable to become a
doctor due to her race. All the nursing staff and the patients are kept marginally sane
by Valerie, and she and Susanna have a complex relationship. Susanna is
questionably diagnosed with having a Borderline Personality Disorder.Things really get started when the sociopath run away patient, Lisa, returns to the ward and turns Susanna's world upside down and inside out. She is a force to be
reckoned with---she is magnetic, rebellious, doesn't take her meds and is unhealthy
for the other patients as she breaks down their self-esteem regularly. Due to the fact
that her last best friend, Jamie, couldn't hack it when she ran away, Lisa befriends
Susanna and together they start a world of trouble.Susanna keeps a diary of all her thoughts and feelings, illustrating in it too, and telling
the tale of her stay through her daily entries.Her ex fling, Toby, comes to visit her and she very nearly tries to have sex with
him in her room. He tells her he wants them to run away to Canada together so that
he doesn't have to go to Vietnam. He tells her she isn't crazy and that the girls in the
asylum aren't really her friends. But she refuses to go with him, subconsciously beginning
to rely on Lisa.Then she meets the head psychiatrist, Dr. Sonia Wick, and claims she is ambivalent, saying it means she doesn't care. But Dr. Wick sees through this mask and decides to
have Susanna see her from now on. Afterwards Lisa is taken in to see the doc, but
doesn't return and Susanna falls into a depression. Nurse Valerie has had enough and
throws her into an ice cold bath to wake her. She tells Susanna, after Susanna attacks
her verbally and says that she doesn't know what she doing, that she is a spoiled, lazy
little girl who is driving herself crazy! And that if Susanna isn't careful she'll throw her
life away on some stupid rebellion.That night Lisa breaks into the ward, wild eyed and crazy, and Susanna runs away with
her so they can get to Disney Land. There they hook up with hippies and eventually
crash at the bulimic, Daisy's, house after bribing her with promises of meds. But all turns
bad when Lisa tells Daisy that she is a freak herself and that this apartment is all a
mask to hide what's really happening. She breaks Daisy down, finally saying that
Daisy probably likes her father molesting her and that it's probably all she's ever known.The next morning Susanna wakes up and goes for a walk, to escape the sound of
Lisa's voice and returns to find Daisy playing a record over and over again and Lisa
in the kitchen. She goes up the stairs and finds Daisy's wrists slit and she hangs herself in the bathroom.
Susanna goes back to the asylum without Lisa, (who runs away again) and starts anew
with Dr. Wick and her diary.When she is due to leave, Lisa breaks out of her padded cell and steals Susanna's
diary. Beneath the ward in the maze of corridors, Lisa reads the diary aloud and
tells the other girls what Susanna thinks of them. Susanna runs away from Lisa
when she begins to chase her with a needle filled with a toxic-looking chemical. Susanna breaks her hand while trying to close a sliding metal door on Lisa and
then they finally confront each other. Susanna tells Lisa finally that no one cares
if she dies because she already is dead and her heart is cold, and that she will start her
life again out of this hospital without Lisa and the others.In the morning she is about to leave, but first visits Lisa and talks to her again. Lisa says that she isn't really cold and that she didn't mean to hurt Susanna. When she leaves she says
goodbye to all her friends, and gets into the cab saying that being crazy isn't about
keeping a secret, it's just about everyone being personified. And by the seventies
most of her friends were out of the clinic and leading lives. The girl who was just
interrupted by herself and everyone else, is finally recovered from being a supposed "borderline".

Tags: insanity, dramatic, autobiographical, psychological, melodrama

Review:
Her performance was convincing as Suzanna, a confused high-school graduate who is eloquent and insightful on paper yet unable to a rticulate her own desperate melancholy.The movie takes place primarily in the women's ward of a mental institution and follows the dynamic friendship between Lisa (Jolie's character) and Suzanna.
The absolute best thing about this film are the knockout performances by it's 2 main stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie though both characters (hence performances) are very different they stand out nonetheless.
Based on her memoir, the film portrays Susanna Kaysen's short stay in a famous mental hospital, supposedly to cure her `borderline personality disorder.'  Set in the late 1960's, Winona Ryder effectively portrays Kaysen.In a tradition reminiscent of Holden Caulfield, the audience knows there is nothing actually wrong with Kaysen, except that she is a typical teenager, and refuses to conform to the life her parents want for her.
Although Ryder does an excellent job portraying the earnestness and confusion of her character, Jolie is the true star of this movie.Adapted from  Kaysen's memoir, the film works well to bring Kaysen's' words to life.
From her experiences in the hospital, Kaysen wrote the book GIRL, INTERRUPTED(the title comes from a Vermeer painting), and now comes the movie version from James Mangold and Winona Ryder.Mangold's first two films, HEAVY and COPLAND, were both about main characters leading lives of quiet desperation; the pizza chef in HEAVY unable to express himself, and the partly sheriff in COPLAND who must learn to assume his responsibility with that position.
There are some major themes going on here, like whether Susanna is really crazy, just spoiled, or conditioned to think something is wrong with her, the nature of what "crazy" is in the 60's, and of course being a woman at the time, but Mangold avoids making big statements for the most part, instead concentrating on Susanna's growth into being a little more sure of herself.As has been said before, Ryder brings a lot to the table, not just being a talented actress, but life research, having spent time in a hospital due to exhaustion(this is why she pulled out of GODFATHER PART III as well).
The patients may make fun of the doctors(well-played by Jeffrey Tambor and Vanessa Redgrave) and occasionally challenge the nurses(head nurse Whoopi Goldberg gives her best performance in a long time), but there's no real hatred here, except maybe from Lisa.Angelina Jolie certainly has a flashy role with Lisa, the resident sociopath, but makes her seem real, until the movie betrays her at the end.
It is a testament to this young actor's presence that even as dark and soul sickened and gloriously decaying as her character is, there is not a frame in this film that doesn't feel her infection.Winona Rider is equally excellent as the psychologically confused (or is it enlightened?) hero forced to navigate the depths of her own psyche.
Set in the 60's, the film is an account of the times spent in the Mental Institution by an eighteen year girl, Susanna Kaysen, a character portrayed with astonishing brilliance by the versatile Winona Ryder.
interrupted."Those are some of the most memorable lines from James Mangold's honest, heartfelt drama "Girl Interrupted." The speaker is Susanna Kaysen, played by Winona Ryder.
She began writing vignettes of her experiences in the hospital, writing short stories about a time in her life she had not discussed for two decades."The only thing that ever made me less loony was writing," remembers Cambridge, Massachusetts-based writer Susanna Kaysen, author of her memoir, "Girl, Interrupted." Set in the turbulent 60's, the film details the young Kaysen, who finds herself at a mental institution for disturbed young women.
The audience cares about Susanna before we even understand why she was sent to the mental institution.The film's supporting cast, including Jared Leto, Clea Duvall, Elizabeth Moss, Jeffrey Tambor, Whoopi Goldberg, Vanessa Redgrave, and Angelina Jolie, who won an Academy Award for her performance, actually develops the mood of the film-an essential aspect of its overall impact.
"Girl, Interrupted" should do wonders for Susanna Kaysen's book; after watching the film, it is hard not to want to read the memoir..
When Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) the 18-year old heroine of "Girl Interrupted" enters Claymoore hospital, a psychiatric facility outside Boston, she is diagnosed with the syndrome - but in fact, all she's done is made a hapless suicide attempt and acted slack and mopey and lost in her sober daydreams.
She's more like the original poster child for Prozac Nation: a girl who'd rather interrupt her own life, even if it means going a little crazy, than grow up.Susanna is thrown in with a turbulent gallery of disturbed young women.
The film allows Ryder to trace Susanna's gradual emergence from her "borderline" state as she confronts the cruel truth of mental illness.Directed with satisfying authority by James Mangold, "Girl Interrupted" is really about the thorny neurotic underside of a contemporary young woman's struggle to leave childhood behind.
Angelina Jolie won a rightfully deserved Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance alongside Winona Ryder in this drama which documents a period of time in which a young woman experiences life in an insane asylum.Winona is Sussana Kasan, based on the real life author who wrote her autobiography about her experiences at the institution.
When Sussana is locked away after an attempted suicide, she befriends the other girls, including sociopath Lisa (Jolie) and digs deep inside herself for answers.It's just a tad bit clichéd and the movie runs painfully long.
Ho hum.Angelina Jolie is really excellent as Lisa and she makes the movie, plus Whoopi Goldberg is entertaining in her side role as a warden with attitude.
Winona Ryder's performance as a young woman being treated for psychological problems in the all-girl wing of an institution in the late 1960s is very fine; she's mannered at times and a little coy, but she seems a sweet puppet with her wires cut, a bobbing head doll, and one never grows tired of her.
I was perplexed by some of Mangold's touches (like having one character commit suicide while listening to the Skeeter Davis record "The End of the World", ha ha); but the sneaky trip away from the hospital that Ryder and Jolie take is an amazing section that works rough magic all on its own.
If basing a movie on a mental institution and its patients concocts triteness, then basing a movie on love is as much of a sin."Girl, Interrupted" places us in the eyes of Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder), a teenage girl who suffers from depression and is signed into the custody of a psychiatric hospital after a failed attempt at suicide.
Every relationship in our life is short-lived, as we're continually moving forward in our journey towards a fulfilled existence; time does not stand still, and the film makes a conscious effort to constantly accentuate this point.For a movie that was almost entirely shot in a hospital ward, the cinematography is exceptionally good.
It's simply astounding.Though the light that "Girl, Interrupted" attempts to place on mentally unstable people is a little questionable at times, it does a nice, subtle job of exposing the puerile nature of a profession which we could nowadays consider an industry.
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.
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.
Exciting movie with exceptional acting by Angelina Jolie as well as Brittney Murphey, Winona Ryder, and Whoopie Goldberg.
I also feel like I'm being lied to by her publishers and by feminists who seem to want to "sanitize" the details of her life.The film Girl, Interrupted was, in my opinion, not terrible, but certainly not great.
I'm not talking about her purported "beauty"; I'm just saying that a young woman like that would look way older than her years.None of the film rang true to me, and I don't want to read the book, because I don't think Kaysen is a reliable narrator.
Winona Ryder plays a spoiled, suicidal rich girl with what looks like a repetitive series of ticks and shakes---it's not so much a performance as an overwrought improv exercise in acting class, and not a very convincing one at that.
As for Nurse Whoopie's comment, that Susanna's just "a spoiled girl making herself crazy", would that the script itself were so clear-headed---the movie's just as guilty of indulging its characters, so unwilling to take them to task for their neuroses real or imagined, that there's no dramatic investment in sticking around until the last reel..
Girl, Interrupted (the motion-picture) waters down a heck of a lot of the plot and replaces it with fictionalised and heavily dramatised events completely absent from the real story, however it benefits from an all-star cast and impressive performances from Angelina Jolie and the late Brittany Murphy..
Directed by James Mangold (COPLAND, THE WOLVERINE) and starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, GIRL INTERRUPTED is the adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's memoir about her time spent in Claymoore for attempted suicide.
It stars Winona Rider and Angelina Jolie both of which give amazing performances in this underrated movie directed by James Mangold who would later go on to directed many other intelligent screenplays such as Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma.
Bewildered by their daughter's gesture and eager to fulfill their duty as parents, the Kaysens delegated a psychiatrist, friend of the family, to submit her to a local mental institution.Once there, Susanna made new friends: Georgina, a pathological lier, Polly  a young woman with the intellect of a twelve-year-old, who had been badly scarred in a fire, Daisy  a secluded anorexic who had been sexually abused by her father and a rebellious captivating sociopath called Lisa.During the day, the girls would trick the nurses to avoid swallowing their pills, which they would afterward exchange among them like candy, while during the night they would force the entrance of the private offices, wonder on the corridors and play bowling in the basement of the mental hospital.Things were getting along fine, just like in the Land of Oz, where people were special, not different, it was strictly up to Dorothy to return to the real world, and all they ever wanted was at reach waiting for them to understand it.
The girl doesn't seem to be mentally unstable at all if you compare her to the other patients at the institute.The storyline of "Girl, Interrupted" is excellent but that will soon become of only secondary importance because the moment you see Angelina Jolie as Lisa for the first time you'll realize who will steal the show.
You can just relax and forget the social issues, there will be a lot of life going on, and ironically the second best and the worst thing about the film is the very same thing this time: seeing Jolie, Ryder and Murphy as the patients kinda make you want to be in there too, but remember, it's only a movie..
Girl, Interrupted is a memoir about a woman who stayed in a Mental Hospital for a while, and retells of the people she interacted with during her stay, and the characters in this movie are portrayed very well, as specially the character of Lisa Rowe.
Winona Ryder is spectacular and Angelina Jolie shines in this awesome movie revolving around a girl who has been committed and learns the meaning of friendship.I enjoyed "Girl, Interrupted" because it is a film delves into a friendship that knows no bounds.
He did a superb job when he chose Ryder and Jolie because they have on screen chemistry that really lights up the screen."Girl, Interrupted" is a movie that takes the viewer places in the heart where no other films have gone before.
But whatever I might have been presupposing, I was definitely rather mistaken.This is a pretty serious film: All the main actresses already named above, as well as Clea Duvall, Brittany Murphy and so on all down the list, turned in excellent performances, with both Ms. Ryder and Ms. Jolie standing out in the main roles.
Based on Susanna Kaysen's book of true experiences in the sixties, James Mangold directed and adapted for screenplay this film, which, almost inevitably, makes us remember and almost obliges us into comparing it with `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', if only because this film is also focussed on life in a mental institution.
Girl Interrupted is worth watching for the superb performances from Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.
There are a handful of good scenes in the middle of the movie--in the best, Ryder and Jolie perform an impromptu version of Petula Clark's "Downtown" for a depressed patient.
But when Whoopi Goldberg, the movie's designated mammy and head nurse, explodes, "You are a lazy, self-indulgent girl driving yourself crazy!" it's hard to suppress a standing cheer.The adaptor-director James Mangold gives the producer-star more adoring closeups since Falconetti played Joan of Arc. Why is it that everyone right now seems to think Mike Nichols is the model for film direction?
Just don't point your f*&$in' finger at crazy people!"Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder are two good resons to watch this brilliant movie over and over again.
This is thanks mainly to the characters in the mental hospital - the sensitive Georgina (DuVall), aggressive but fragile Daisy (Murphy), the childlike Polly (Moss) and, last but definitely not least, Jolie's volatile rebel Lisa.The film gets better and better as it goes on, the main interest point being the relationship between Lisa and Susanna, but there's a hugely effective subplot concerning Daisy's ordeal, which results in a fantastic and pivotal scene that sends the film into a great final act.The performances are great.
Winona Ryder stars as Susanna Kaysen in this movie adapted from the real Kaysen's book about her stay in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1960's after a suicide attempt.Ryder puts on a generally good performance, but is outshone by Angelina Jolie, playing Lisa, Kaysen's sometimes friend and sometimes tormenter.
I thought Whoopi Goldberg was strangely cast in a rather limited role as the head nurse of the institution, who consistently challenges Kaysen to get better and get out of the place.In spite of the generally good performances, though, the story was a bit slow-moving.
Had Angelina Jolie not won the best supporting actress Oscar for GIRL, INTERRUPTED, this movie would most likely be forgotten within a few months of being transferred from the new releases shelf to the drama section at your local video store.
Angelina Jolie became a star overnight with her performance as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted - she thoroughly deserved the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.One of the most talented actresses to emerge in the Eighties, Winona Ryder has not been so good since she played the malicious Abigail Williams in The Crucible.
There are some people out there who might like Girl, Interrupted, the latest Winona Ryder movie.
Aside from some angst-ridden whining by Susanna, and her occasional "adventurous" tryst with bad-girl antagonist Lisa, this movie still has the same dull heartbeat as many of its doped-up and drooling extras.Add to the fact that Lisa, the crazy, wild, exhilarating rebel inmate, is played by Angelina "inflate lips to 40 psi" Jolie, who is not one of my favorite actresses, as some of you know.Ryder did a good job.
I thought this film was really great.I thought all the people who acted in this film were really good but I especially thought that Angelina Jolie was excellent.She portrayed her character very convincingly.Not many actresses could play this part and make it work.I have also read the book and found it very interesting but i preferred the film.not many people I know have ever heard of this film.I have seen it many a time and still enjoy it each time i watch it.
Both Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie present powerful performances with strong supporting actors ensuring the film never flakes in the acting department.
And here is one of the main roles of crazy Angelina Jolie, who, in my opinion, perfectly played a mentally ill girl.Crazy talk touched in this film.
Late Brittany Murphy & Clea DuVall are very good, while Whoopi Goldberg proves her status yet again.On the whole, 'Girl Interrupted' is complicated, at times boring, but the story of Susanna Kaysen surely needs to be watched.
Winona Ryder did a really good job too and this movie really reminded me of some people in my life who like to create or invent problems for themselves.
Or maybe life is."Based on the non-fiction novel of the same name, Girl, Interrupted is about a young woman in the 60's named Susanna (Winona Ryder) who is encouraged by her parents to enter a mental institution for a short time after she attempts to commit suicide.
I don't know how accurate each woman's behaviors were to their actual conditions, but it was interesting seeing that what Susanna says at one point during the movie was actually true; that the people in the hospital really did and wanted the same things that we all do, only to an extreme.I hope I'm not making Girl, Interrupted sound like some documentary on mental health, because that's not what it is at all.
I consider it to be, one of the most educative, intelligent dramas ever created.The film, presents the story of the main character Susanna Kaysen, interpreted by Winnona Ryder, who spent 18 months at a mental hospital in the 1960's.
Winona Ryder is a "Girl, Interrupted" in this 1999 film also starring Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Brittany Murphy, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave and Clea Duvall.