Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Directed by James Mangold
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
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What critics say influenced Girl, Interrupted
Of course other films have portrayed mental illness in that same age bracket - notably 1977's "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden" with Kathleen Quinlan as a teen schizophrenic - but this film's target audience has probably never even heard of that one.
The film used three credited screenwriters (the director, Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan) to fill in the inevitable blanks, but in doing so it's had a hard time resisting manufacturing obvious, standard-issue drama of the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" knockoff variety.
Comparisons with that other Oscar-winning, book-to-movie mental-institution classic, Milos Foreman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" are inevitable.
It could almost be looked at as a cross between "Reality Bites" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", but it ends up being disappointing, dull, and uneven.
Teen angst gets the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" treatment in "Girl, Interrupted," James Mangold's disappointingly common and commercial follow-up to his earlier, low-budget wonders "Heavy" and "Cop Land."
Set in 1967, and adapted from Kaysen's memoir of her two-year experience as an adolescent in the throes of a middle-class crack-up, Girl, Interrupted is shrewd, tough, and livelya junior-league One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that never makes the mistake of portraying its protagonist as a victim-naif.
Pitch: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in drag.
Whoopi Goldberg ("Ghost," "The Color Purple") is decent as the standard, no nonsense but wise head nurse, while Jeffrey Tambor ("Meet Joe Black," HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show") and Vanessa Redgrave ("Howards End," "Julia") make brief appearances as facility doctors.
Whoopi Goldberg ("Ghost," "The Color Purple") is decent as the standard, no nonsense but wise head nurse, while Jeffrey Tambor ("Meet Joe Black," HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show") and Vanessa Redgrave ("Howards End," "Julia") make brief appearances as facility doctors.
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Alas, the Jack she's channeling is the one who created vainglorious creatures like the devil in "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987) and the Joker in "Batman" (1989).
Director James Mangold (Heavy) claims the role of Lisa is "a showy, tour de force kind of role, and a showy, tour de force kind of actress won the part."
It has been documented that star Winona Ryder has been passionate about a film adaptation of Kaysen's intriguing story (despite her book not following any sort of narrative) for several years, and it was only until she found a home at Columbia Pictures and collaborated with director James Mangold (1996's "Heavy") that everything fell into place.
As James Mangold's third feature, following "Heavy" and "Copland," the result demonstrates his fascination with performance, looks and gazes.
Teen angst gets the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" treatment in "Girl, Interrupted," James Mangold's disappointingly common and commercial follow-up to his earlier, low-budget wonders "Heavy" and "Cop Land."
Pedigree: Director James Mangold made the indie classic "Heavy"; Susanna Kaysen's critically acclaimed memoir inspired the adaptation.
Third-time feature director Mangold worked miracles with this sort of slow-building drama in his debut movie, "Heavy," and the underrated "Copland."
Teen angst gets the "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" treatment in "Girl, Interrupted," James Mangold's disappointingly common and commercial follow-up to his earlier, low-budget wonders "Heavy" and "Cop Land."
However, Girl, Interrupted's director James Mangold ( Cop Land ) never quite figures that out.
Naturally, the state of good roles for women in Hollywood being what it is, a movie version seemed in order, which is how we arrive at director James (Cop Land) Mangold's version, with Kaysen played by Winona Ryder and Lisa by Angelina Jolie.
Mangold, who directed the punchy Cop Land a couple of years back, lets the story take its own course, rarely relying on the more cinematic aspects of his skills and instead allowing the slow burn of mental illness and all of its attendant ghastlies to wash over the audience like a sluggish hospital-green tide of unease.
Written and directed by James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land), Girl, Interrupted feels like competent filmmaking, but it also feels stale.
Considering that and the fact that writer/director James Mangold ("Cop Land," "Heavy") along with co-screenwriters Lisa Loomer (TV films "Road to Kensington," "Hearts Afire") and Anna Hamilton Phelan ("Gorillas in the Mist," "Mask") never really offer or examine anything new, the film ultimately has nowhere to go.
Whoopi Goldberg ("Ghost," "The Color Purple") is decent as the standard, no nonsense but wise head nurse, while Jeffrey Tambor ("Meet Joe Black," HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show") and Vanessa Redgrave ("Howards End," "Julia") make brief appearances as facility doctors.
Jared Leto ("Fight Club," "Prefontaine") has a brief stint as Susanna's wayward boyfriend of sorts.
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Whoopi Goldberg (Sister Act) projects just the right amount of concern as a no-nonsense ward nurse; Vanessa Redgrave (Mrs.
At Claymoore, she, at first, is able to see she is dissimilar to most of the other residents, but the line between well and sick is gradually blurred when she sparks friendships with several of the other girls living there, including Georgina (Clea Duvall), her roommate, who is called a pathological liar and has a fondness for "The Wizard of Oz"; the sweet-natured Polly (Elisabeth Moss), who once lit half of her face on fire in an attempt to get rid of a rash; and the introverted Daisy (Brittany Murphy), who has an eating disorder involving only consuming her father's rotisserie chickens.