Posted by Abby on January 21, 2000, at 13:55:41
My mother was hospitalized at McLean in the sixties too,
but I don't think her diagnosis was particularly
fashionable---schizophrenia.They said she would recover; based on an involuntary
evaluation a couple of years ago, I'm pretty sure she
was actually an atypical bipolar.My grandparents found some comfort through the
services of an extremely expensive psychiatrist.
This guy was head of the Boston Psychoanalytic
Society and in the early 90's he lost his license,
because he had gotten inappropriately involved with
two of his female patients.James Bowman wrote a negative review of "Girl
Interrupted" for the American Spectator.Girl, Interrupted (no stars)
Everything that is important in Girl, Interrupted, directed
by James Mangold and based on the memoir by Suzanna
Kaysen, can be condensed into one comment by the
mental institution attendant, Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg),
as she attempts to give the reluctant Suzanna (Winona
Ryder) a bath. "This place is a f--king fascist torture
chamber," says the winsome Winona, and proceeds to
engage in some racial innuendo. Although Susanna has
been diagnosed with what the doctors call "borderline
personality disorder," she is like most of the middle-class
girls who have come to this private asylum in 1968, more
bored and neurotic than crazy. She has adopted her
highly interesting mental state as her only hobby. It also
allows her the freedom to misbehave and then to rail
against her "fascist" keepers for punishing her -- even to
engage in some deliberately shocking racial innuendo.This it is which finally goads Valerie into replying: "You
are a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself
crazy," she says. Unlike those who must now put up with
her, she has been showered with all the good things life
has to offer, "and you're just throwing it away."What else is there to say? At some level Susanna Kaysen,
thirty years on, must see the truth of this admittedly
amateur diagnosis. But though she is older and wiser and
presumably no longer confined to an institution, she
obviously has not abandoned her youthful hobby
completely. That is one of the characteristics of her
generation, as is her dislike of the idea of growing up. "I
don't want to end up like my mother," she tells her high
school guidance counselor, as if she had any choice in the
matter. Her continued fascination with the mental ups and
downs of her youthful self would be unbearably tedious
were it not for the performance of the remarkable
Angelina Jolie as the free spirited Lisa, who really is
crazy. If Miss Jolie does not win best actress in a
supporting role for this performance, the Academy will
have done her a serious injustice.Lisa may have started out as sane as Susanna. She
appears to hold one of the most appallingly stupid of the
many stupid opinions which were rife in the 1960s,
namely that insanity is "a gift; it helps you see the truth."
But as it so often does, the pretense has become the
reality. Now she is clearly a dangerous lunatic. This does
not prevent her, however, from being as clear-sighted
about most of her fellow inmates as Valerie is, and
considerably less tactful. "You people are all weak f--king
people," she says. "You're victims!" She's also very
shrewd in her understanding of the therapeutic system.
"The more you confess, the more they think about setting
you free," she tells Susanna."What if you don't have a secret?"
"Then you're a lifer like me."
It is Lisa's casual destruction of one of the other girls, the
fragile Daisy (Brittany Murphy in another terrific
performance) who is the victim of her father's sexual
abuse, which finally jolts Susanna back into something
like normality. "I couldn't stand up to her," she says after
having watched Lisa goad Daisy to suicide. "A decent
person would have done something." Finally, she does
stand up to Lisa, telling her that "Maybe the whole world
is stupid and ignorant, but I'd rather be in it. I'd rather be
in it than down here with you." This is a powerful
statement, the moment at which Susanna sees both the
game she has been playing and the terrible cost it can
exact. But she hasn't got that aperçu clearly enough in
focus and keeps wandering off to gaze at the ideological
and therapeutic clouds which have hitherto kept it hidden.Anyway--an interesting perspective.
poster:Abby
thread:19346
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000112/msgs/19346.html