Girl, Interrupted (1999)

James Mangold's "Girl, Interrupted" is the best film that I have seen about disabled people since "Rain Man" (1988) but the key difference between those two films is that this movie is based on true events. The movie stars Winona Ryder as Susanna Kaysen who wrote the book that this movie was adapted from and it talks about her time and experience in a mental hospital in the 1960's but at first it isn't that easy for her to make many friends. During her first few days the only person she really trusts is the supervising nurse named Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) whose job is very difficult and Goldberg's character is the polar opposite of Nurse Ratched who was played by Louise Fletcher in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975). As her time in the hospital progresses Susanna meets a girl named Georgina (Clea Duvall), and then meets a girl who everyone really gets annoyed with and despises at times is a girl named Lisa (Angelina Jolie) who has a really bad attitude. Then in one scene we see Kaysen's boyfriend named Tobias Jacobs (Jared Leto) who is trying to sneak Susanna out of the hospital but Susanna refuses. Other friends that Susanna happens to make are girls named Daisy (Brittany Murphy), Polly (Elisabeth Moss) and others. The reason why Susanna Kaysen was sent to the hospital in the first place was because she was very suicidal which she was sent there by a psychiatrist named Dr. Potts (Jeffrey Tambor). The other doctor in the mental hospital has a very weird last name and her name is Dr. Wick (Vanessa Redgrave), the movie has an excellent cast and great performances throughout which are so good because it really makes you empathize with each and every one of the characters and we feel like we are actually there getting to know them. As the great Roger Ebert once said that "For me the movies are a machine that generates empathy, it helps to understand hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us." and that is exactly how I felt with this and many other movies. Despite this movie being one of the best films of 1999 it isn't the very best movie that James Mangold ever directed (that would be "Walk the Line" (2005) which also happened to be a biopic). James Mangold has done a very good by making this movie just focus on the characters and their feelings instead of just shedding a bad light on them as people even though we know their problems are bad just like Barry Levinson did with "Rain Man" 11 years before this movie was made. This was a truly great movie but as a warning it might only be worth watching once.

Based on a true story, Girl, Interrupted gives an account of Susanna Kaysen's 18 month stay at a mental hospital during the 1960's.I'll kick off with a disclaimer that I have not read Susanna Kaysen's book, but I can only presume, and hope, that the book doesn't have nearly as many shortcomings as the film.One major thing I did take exception to with this film is its lack of depth and development in terms of its characters. Angelina Jolie's character Lisa is a sociopath who is little more than a playground bully which truth be told is it a little one-note and becomes a bit tiresome after the novelty wears off. Jolie is quite good here and this film helped to showcase that she had some range, but I just wish that her character had been given more dimension and depth. In fairness, we do gain more of an understanding of her character at the end of the film, but this doesn't make up for the fact that Jolie had nothing to work with in the early stages of the film. The only other supporting character to get any sort of focus was Daisy (Brittany Murphy), but again her character isn't that well-written and her character, like Lisa, didn't really have enough depth to make me care.Even when looking at the main character Susanna the writers probably don't develop her as well as they should have done; it seemed with Susanna, like Lisa, that all of the interesting things about her character are lazily thrown in at the end and prior to this we witness numerous therapy sessions, flashbacks, and Susanna ingratiating herself with the sisterhood at Claymoore and sadly I didn't find any of these things particularly insightful.Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder put in good performances and some of the insights given at the end do give the film some weight, but I couldn't help but feel that the director's own indulgences got in the way far too often. Girl, Interrupted provides us with a lot of potentially interesting characters that sadly are never allowed to become interesting and a potentially interesting story that doesn't always focus its attention in the right areas. Inevitably, this film will probably be compared to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but by comparison, Girl, Interrupted falls short.

If you really wanna see Angelina Jolie (at 24 years old) chewing up the scenery as only Angelina Jolie could possibly chew up the scenery - Then be sure to check out her atrocious, over-the-top performance here as the looney-tune "Lisa".Sporting a horribly ratty, blond, fright wig - Jolie literally bulldozes her self-centered way through every single scene in this picture just like the no-talent actress-from-hell that I'm convinced she really is.Yeah. It's like I've said before about Jolie - Had her father not been veteran, Hollywood actor, Jon Voight, then you can be sure that this bungling babe (with the puffy lips) would have never, ever been fast-tracked into mega-stardom as she inevitably was. No way, Jose.And, speaking about actress, Winona Ryder - At 30 years old - There was no way on Earth that she could ever convince me that she was the 18 year old, Susanna character who she was attempting to portray in the story. Not a chance.All-in-all - This totally irksome, clichéd and heavy-handed Chick Flick from 1999 made my skin absolutely crawl with revulsion like you wouldn't believe. Yep. It really did.

James Mangold is a director who takes nothing but top shelf scripts and spins them into gold, and Girl Interrupted is a shining example of this. It's based on a book by Susannah Kayson in which she outlines an 18 month stay at a mental ward sometime during the 60's. Mangold adapts her book for the screen, gathers an excellent cast of talented gals and a couple guys, and makes a film that holds up today like it was still it's release week in 1999. Winona Ryder plays Susanna, a reckless girl who is labelled wayward and unstable by her parents, committed to a facility by her stern psychiatrist (Red Forman himself, Kurtwood Smith). She's a little rough around the edges, but one senses the innate sensibility to her that perhaps has been buried under turbulent behaviour not by anything within her, but by the constricting nature of the time period she has been born into. In any case, she finds herself thrown into an environment she didn't expect, with many other girls, some of which she clashes with, some of which she ends up befriending, and one that.. well, defies classification, really. The girl in question is Lisa, played by a fantastically fired up Angelina Jolie who nearly combusts upon herself in her furious performance. Lisa has been dubbed nearly unable to treat, yet simply has the kind of soul that doesn't fit into a box, let alone lend itself to scholarly dissection. Ice cool one moment, a raging typhoon the next, and holding a dense riot shield over any trace of her true emotions every second, she's an enigmatic, elemental wild card. It's the best work I've ever seen from Jolie, getting her a well earned Oscar nod. She teaches Susanna some lessons that only people on that side of the glass can comprehend, confounding the facility's head doctor (Vanessa Redgrave) and puzzling a kind orderly (Whoopi Goldberg), two rational people who simply can't understand the kind resolution and companionship that often comes out of irrational, unconventional interaction that almost always is seen as 'unstable'. Ryder is pitch perfect and carries her share of the load, but despite being the protagonist, it's Jolie's show all the way. She's unbelievably good and will break the heart of both first time viewers and veterans who put the DVD in every so often for a tearful revisit. The late Brittany Murphy is great as Daisy, another complicated girl, and Clea Duvall scores points as Georgina, the shy and reserved one. There's also work from Jared Leto Elizabeth Moss, Angela Bettis, Bruce Altman, Mary Kay Place, Kadee Strickland, Misha Collins and Jeffrey Tambor. Tender, patient and non judgmental are qualities which are essential in films of this subject matter, as well as empathy from both viewer and filmmaker, to take a look at these girls and even though we may not understand what is going on with them or their beaviour, to simply bear witness, and be there for them. Mangold knows this and acts accordingly, leading to a beautiful film of the highest order. Viewers are sure to do the same, completing the artistic ring full circle.