What's worse, a remake or a rip-off? In the right hands, both can be better than the original work on which they are based, but more often then not they fail to do so. Is it worse to tarnish a film's legacy, or to steal from it and try to hide the theft under a new title. Personally, I think that remakes are worse. If you want to see that movie, go see it, it already exists. Rip-offs provide opportunity not only for new interpretations of material but also new plot developments that differ wildly from the original work. Girl, Interrupted, while based on the memoirs of a real life psychiatric patient, the film itself is clearly a 90's feminist rip-off of the classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. While it doesn't live up to the originator, it's not a complete waste of celluloid.
Based on the memoir by the same title, Girl, Interuppted tells the story of Susanna Kasen (Winona Ryder) and her experience in a mental hospital during the late 1960s. After graduating high school as the only member of class not going on to college, Susanna attempts suicide by chasing a bottle of pain killers with a bottle of vodka. After making a recovery, she is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and is admitted to Claymoore, an upscale psychiatric institution. Where she makes friends with the other patients there. There's Lisa (Angelina Jolie) a manic, wild woman whose main goals seem to alienation and isolation, Polly (Elizabeth Moss) a burn victim, and the bulemic Daisy (Brittany Murphy). The group of patients struggle to get along at first, but become friends, and share the highs and lows of life in Claymoore. Some patients leave, others are lifers, that's just they way things are. The reality of the situation though is that Susanna isn't insane like the others and could manage just find in the outside world, this is something the head nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) recognizes and encourages Susanna not to be content with her life inside, and to make an effort to return to her old life. While the film does take place in the 60s, it really could have taken place at any time in history. Some allusions are made to the counterculture movement and the racial issues of the time, but they are frequently brushed aside.
This film is angsty. Very angsty. It's the perfect film for a female adolescent who is starting to deal with the harsh realities of the world and feels she isn't understood by those around her, because this is essentially who the protagonist, Susanna, is. The film is told in episodes as various events occur in the hospital, but there is no strong overarching plot. This unfortunately leads to an unsatisfying conclusion as there are no real character relationships that can be solved without resorting to melodrama. Ryder, Jolie, and Goldberg are the stars of this movie though, each of them bringing very different characters to the table and all of them performing wonderfully. Ryder's Susanna is quiet, thoughtful, angsty, but not to the point of caricature. Jolie and Goldberg are equally talented in this film as the loose cannon and the tough, but fair nurse. Angelina Jolie would eventually win an Oscar for Supporting Actress for this role. But in the end, this is just a milquetoast version of Cuckoo's Nest. We get the story of a counterculture new-comer to a 1960s mental hospital who doesn't really belong and the relationships they form with the other patients as they struggle to deal with life on the inside, and the tough nurse who runs the place. The screenwriter's of Interrupted should have lifted the ending from Cuckoo's Nest as well. I would have loved to see the big lesbian break through the wall to run to freedom.
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| Never Forget |
Rating: 6/10 - Virtuous
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