Good Side of Bad is a brilliant and unsentimental portrayal of how mental illness (and, incidentally, alcoholism) is best understood as a family disease. By looking at the disease, and telling the story, through the experiences of the sister, brother, and mother of the designated patient, it avoids the common tropes of triumph, or rescue, that render so many stories about mental illness unconvincing. The pathetic failure of institutional efforts to treat mental illness as a purely medical problem addressed by medication, and creation of a controlled community, separate from family and environment, makes understandable the patients' efforts to heal themselves by subverting, rather than following, the coercive and unfeeling efforts to "fix" them.
There are no stars in this movie. Every character is convincing as a flawed human being struggling with the many different ways mental illness impacts their lives. The arc of the story reveals no solutions. Only that this family disease is best addressed by family responses.
And while there are no stars, this reviewer was in awe of Tess Harper, whose performance, 40 years ago, gave all the heart to Tender Mercies. Here, in a completely different role, she reflected all the pain from another family disease.
