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#161 - Girl, Interrupted
James Mangold, 1999
In the 1960s, a young woman is committed to a mental institution after an apparent suicide attempt.
Girl, Interrupted is a solid enough film about the female inhabitants of a mental institution and both their internal and external conflicts with one another and themselves. Winona Ryder stars as the newest patient, who initially starts out denying that she belongs in an institution before gradually warming up to the rest of the patients. Angelina Jolie definitely steals the show as one especially unhinged patient who is constantly shaking things up and alternately awes and intimidates everyone she encounters. Though she fluctuates between being the best friend of all the other patients (including Ryder) or being an antagonistic wildcard, she still makes for a magnetic presence in just about every scene she's in. There are some decent supporting characters on both sides of the sanity divide, all of which play their relatively small parts well.
The film does go to some effort to communicate the disorder of Ryder's mind, complete with editing that is quick without being disorienting and encounters with some frustratingly obtuse authority figures. It does try to communicate the highs and lows that being in a 1960s mental institution might entail (so presumably I can write off a scene where Ryder more or less gets away with hooking up with her draft-dodging love interest in her room on the ward) and, though the climax feels a little forced and overly dramatic considering the relatively realistic tone of the rest of the film, it's still a decent enough drama about life in an institution.
James Mangold, 1999
In the 1960s, a young woman is committed to a mental institution after an apparent suicide attempt.
Girl, Interrupted is a solid enough film about the female inhabitants of a mental institution and both their internal and external conflicts with one another and themselves. Winona Ryder stars as the newest patient, who initially starts out denying that she belongs in an institution before gradually warming up to the rest of the patients. Angelina Jolie definitely steals the show as one especially unhinged patient who is constantly shaking things up and alternately awes and intimidates everyone she encounters. Though she fluctuates between being the best friend of all the other patients (including Ryder) or being an antagonistic wildcard, she still makes for a magnetic presence in just about every scene she's in. There are some decent supporting characters on both sides of the sanity divide, all of which play their relatively small parts well.
The film does go to some effort to communicate the disorder of Ryder's mind, complete with editing that is quick without being disorienting and encounters with some frustratingly obtuse authority figures. It does try to communicate the highs and lows that being in a 1960s mental institution might entail (so presumably I can write off a scene where Ryder more or less gets away with hooking up with her draft-dodging love interest in her room on the ward) and, though the climax feels a little forced and overly dramatic considering the relatively realistic tone of the rest of the film, it's still a decent enough drama about life in an institution.