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In years to come, this film will be remembered as the one which
featured Angelina Jolie's Oscar winning Best Supporting Actress
performance. It is also a well made and thought provoking movie
without the expected sentimentality that could have made it
unbearable.
The film is based on the book by Susanna Kaysen which recounts
her real life experience of spending two years in a psychiatric
institution in the late Sixties. Winona Ryder (who herself spent
some time in a psychiatric ward as a teenager) produced the
movie and stars as Kaysen. Kaysen is admitted to Claymoore after
attempting to kill herself with an overdose of aspirin. She
is diagnosed with some vague condition and ends up in a ward
with character such as Daisy (a Daddy's girl who won't let people
into her room), Polly (who has been both emotionally and physically
scarred after being burnt in a fire), Georgina (a pathological
liar), and Lisa (Jolie, a sociopath who knows how to bring out
the worst in everybody).
While nobody in this ward is really that insane, it becomes
clear to the staff (especially a saintly Whoopi Goldberg) that
Kaysen is one of the sanest of them all. Susanna is too defensive
to realise this so she stays in the hospital for a couple of
years and ends up in all sorts of weird adventures with the
other girls, including midnight sessions of ten pin bowling
and raid to the doctor's office to read their files (this really
is a MINIMUM security facility).
While Jolie deserves her accolades as the scarily sociopathic
Lisa, Ryder is perfect as the jittery, unsure, but sensitive
Kaysen. This movie was a project initiated by Ryder herself
and her passion for the role shows in her performance. The other
performances are suitably understated which makes the movie
watchable as it is not populated with the usual mob of screaming
patients that are there to make the audience feel uncomfortable.
As this movie is set in the Sixties, it contains the obligatory
Wonder Years style references to American events of the time
(the girls watch news footage of the Martin Luther King assassination).
There is also an ongoing reference to the Wizard of Oz, as if
Susanna has been transported to some weird Oz like place that
she can escape from at any time if she only knew she had the
power. Even the cat's name is Ruby.
A pretty good movie. The characters are believable even not
everybody will be able to identify with them.
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