DAVID, ANGEL MICAH M.

BSN 3Y2-2
NCMB 317 LEC

MOVIE REVIEW ON GIRL INTERRUPTED

"Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash?
Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just
crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... 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. The film is
based on the memoir of Kaysen herself, re-encountering the experiences she actually spent
in a mental institution after an attempted suicide. The book of the same name was published
in 1993; it spent time on almost every best-seller list, including 11 weeks on the New York
Times.

It was in the 1980's when Kaysen began to revisit the most formative time in her life-20
years after the actual hospitalization. Memories of a nearly two-year stay at McLean
Psychiatric Hospital, a private and exclusive institution near Cambridge, resurfaced while
constructing her second book. 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. Susanna makes friends, including a seductive and
dangerous regular named Lisa (Angelina Jolie).

I have never read this book, but after watching "Girl, Interrupted" I am seriously considering
it. The film is a powerful exploration into a depressing, bleak situation. When this movie was
released theatrically in late 1999, I wondered how many people would want to see
something about a young writer who tries to kill herself and then spends time in a nut-
house. However, I was wrong to presume anything. "Girl, Interrupted" contains a vivid,
convincing world for its characters, but never do we feel awkward while watching this film,
but involved and concerned.

It's always tough in today's goal-obsessed society to be someone who isn't quite sure what
they want, but woman and minorities especially have it tough, because they seem to be
automatically assigned "roles" for them(if you're a woman, even today, people still ask you
when you're going to get married; if you're black and look big, people ask if you're an
athlete). In the 60's, author Susanna Kaysen was in a similar position; she didn't know what
she wanted to do with her life, but knew she didn't quite fit into the norm. Because of that,
and because of some legitimate problems(she tried to kill herself by swallowing a bottle of
aspirin), she went into a mental hospital and was tagged with having "borderline personality
disorder," a catch-all phrase which meant whatever the doctors wanted it to mean. 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. Susanna
fits in with those two characters, and Mangold does just as good a job with her, except for
some melodramatic scenes near the end. 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.