Girl, Interrupted (Columbia, R)
Starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie
Rating:
Three stars - A bit too much sulking, but some pretty well-rounded performances.
The world is a crazy mess and the truly crazy are the ones who try to make sense of it all - or so the theory goes in "Girl, Interrupted."
Of course, to show everything that was crazy about the 1960s would take at least a television miniseries, and NBC dropped the ball on that one. So rising stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie lead us into the world of a pseudo-psychiatric ward ripe with conflict and increasingly sad characters.
Rider plays Susanna, a confused teen from a wealthy family. Through stream-of-consciousness ramblings, we see that all is not peachy-keen in Susanna's life. Instance upon instance of ignorance to her needs leads to Susanna chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka.
After a visit with a father's friend, Susanna learns that it would be in the best interest of the family if she went to Claymoore to help her with her problems. Without a single goodbye, she is off to a great unknown.
Right off the bat, things are not quite sane in the hospital. The ward is quite reminiscent of the one shown in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Led by Valerie (Whoopie Goldberg and her mushroom afro), Susanna meets with all of the residents, each with a distinguishable problem. All of the extremes of emotion start to make Susanna wonder if anything is really with her in comparison.
Making a grand entrance with police escort is the returning Lisa (Jolie). Ah, Miss Lisa. A bra-less bundle of unleashed id, Lisa immediately disrupts the quiet ward with kicks, yells and screams.
At first, Susanna truly believes that she did not try to kill herself. She thinks her main problem is that she can't make people understand what she is thinking. Random mentions of disruptions in time and a condition that removes all the bones in her body do not help the denial efforts.
Much of the rest of the film deals in group interaction with extremely different conditions and personalities. Specifically, how Susanna deals with the presence of Lisa, who has been in and out of Claymoore for eight years. The conflict carises when an escape to the "real world" is offered against the prospect of helping herself through the rough times.
The movie, based on a memoir of the same name by Susanna Kaysen, starts out a little hard to digest. Flashbacks and flashforwards in the mind of Susanna are hard to keep track so early on. Looking back on the scenes, however, they provide a good foundation to see the futile moments leading up the intervention.
Instead of being reminiscent of films such as "One Flew Over..." or the underlying themes from "The Wizard of Oz," the movie takes bits and pieces to makes a synthesis of its own outlook on young women's lives. Lisa seems, at the start, to be the firestarter, much like Jack Nicholson played. But Lisa is no anti-hero. She just hides her problems behind the rage of going against the system. Sometimes making good observations on life does not mean the originator is without problems themselves.
A greater theme is the slow transformation of authorities and elders from automatic enemies to people trying to do their jobs - helping others. Goldberg is quite good as the sage ward leader, putting up with so much for the chance to make breakthroughs.
In the end, the message is quite mixed. No easy answers are found, and most of the characters' futures are left up in the air. But through the struggles, a definitive insight is made into "insane" lives and those that live them. To say that the message is lost on the audience would be just plain crazy.
Originally published in the 1/20/00 edition of the Northern Star.
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