Girl, Interrupted

How good is Angelina Jolie in this film? It is a testament to this young actor's presence that even as dark and soul sickened and gloriously decaying as her character is, there is not a frame in this film that doesn't feel her infection.

Winona Rider is equally excellent as the psychologically confused (or is it enlightened?) hero forced to navigate the depths of her own psyche. The interplay between these two is somehow able to range from the enchanting to the exquisitely painful; but from beginning to end remains capable of leaving you breathless.

Presented with the softly rendered and absorbing visualization of a young girl's decent into psychological insecurity; it is a hauntingly supple progression toward the half understood disturbance of what we might have experienced. If you've ever questioned your own sanity or escaped periods of exceptional melancholy in your life, this film is certain to trigger old fears. But it is also certain to remind you how exquisite and simple salvation can often be.

Refreshingly unlike any of the myriad of fine 'expose' films detailing the darker side of madness (see Roman Polanski's 'Repulsion') or even those with a more poli-social agenda (see Milos Foreman's 'One Flew Over the Cookoo's nest'); 'Girl, Interrupted' achieves a very rare victory in modern film. It conjures enough unnerving insight to bring us scintilatingly close to its most macabre moments; while sewing atop this a spiritual safety net. One capable of the mental restoration that must bring us back to the security of our well cushioned theatre seat. All movement in between remains internal; a lingering memory of personal identification and cathartic resolution.

One look into Angelina Jolie's eyes and you will see the warm, jaundiced decay of a soul no longer battling with sanity. Fear is born of those eyes when you realize how strongly they've tempted your own tired efforts...even as the second look delves closer to a bleakness bearing fruition beyond existential suicide. This film deserves that second look, as well as its painful salvation: a jaundiced beauty whose tragic death is no less healing than the memory of a lost friend.

I came to the film with low expectations. I was simply stunned by how good it was.

Angelina Jolie is an absolutely PHENOMENAL actress. Her performance alone is worth watching the movie for. But unlike show-stoppers like Marissa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinnie," merely shines the brightest light in a luminescent cast.

The cinematography was innovative, but not distractingly so-- "Girl Interupted" shines primarily for its dramatic power, not as a mind-blowing work of art. It will not explode your vision of the mundane world in the same way that "American Beauty" might, but it will certainly probe you to question your way of seeing the world-- at least psychologically.

Winona Ryder challenged my preconception of her, and proved herself as more than a pretty-girl. Her performance was convincing as Suzanna, a confused high-school graduate who is eloquent and insightful on paper yet unable to a rticulate her own desperate melancholy.

The movie takes place primarily in the women's ward of a mental institution and follows the dynamic friendship between Lisa (Jolie's character) and Suzanna. Lisa is a kinetic, dynamic personality who cuts right to the "truth" of things. Her "truth" knows no boundaries and she is a controlling person prone to violence. Her piercing insights about people and social recklessness led to her to be institutionalized as a sociopath.

This is not a depressing film. Rather, it is suprisingly life-affirming. Not cloying, not sacherine, but not inpenetrably dark, either. Anyone seeking an angst-ridden portrayal of abuses in mental institutions should check out Jack Nicholson's "One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest."

This film has little of the violent anger of that old classic. Yet it does echo some of the ebulience, the defiance of authority and embracing of freedom at sometimes incalculable cost.

Performances by Whoppie Goldberg (in a serious and nuanced role) and Vanessa Redgrave were excellent, as expected.

With the exception of a few holywood gimmicks, predictable cuts and music, this is a nearly flawless film. Dead-on dramatically, and excellently scripted and based on an eloquent true-story by Suzana Keisen, this movie offers a glimpse of one intensely personal experience of truth. Without the quotation marks, dark cynicism, or pretensions that revelation so frequently entails.

The absolute best thing about this film are the knockout performances by it's 2 main stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie though both characters (hence performances) are very different they stand out nonetheless. It seems to me to be somewhat easier to play a psychotic than to play a regular neurotic, so who really has the better portrayal of the two?

Brittany Murphy as "Daisy" shines in her scenes. She is a force to reckon with in her future film career.

James Mangold directed this film quite nicely from a very good screenplay; he managed to portray all these young women as young women in turmoil. No melodrama, no over the top sentimentality, just a frank peek into their tumultuous lives.

It is a heavy drama, so be forewarned! And a very moving drama at that.

I loved this movie from on the first day I saw it. This story is so unique in its way showing the problems many people have to face when being young. The best thing about this movie is, that it's based upon the experience of the real Susanna Kaysen, which means that the story is not only real but also natural and not "brightened up" for entertainment. It shows reality as it is! The actors do a really great job and among other acting personalities we can find Whoopie Goldberg, Winona Ryder and Jared Leto which seem just perfect for the roles they embody. The story, which seems to me loving and cruel at the same time, is pictured by a wonderful musical score and great songs more or less known from those hard days known as the 60's. This movie is a MUST for everyone who is seeking for a deep, thoughtful and emotional film as well as great actors!

"Borderline personality disorder" is one of those phrases that says more about the people who invented it than it does about the patient it's supposed to describe. When Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) the 18-year old heroine of "Girl Interrupted" enters Claymoore hospital, a psychiatric facility outside Boston, she is diagnosed with the syndrome - but in fact, all she's done is made a hapless suicide attempt and acted slack and mopey and lost in her sober daydreams. Her personality isn't borderline -- it's self-pitying and indulgent. Fortunately, the film understands this. 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 lively - a junior-league "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that never makes the mistake of portraying its protagonist as a victim-naif. She's more like the original poster child for Prozac Nation: a girl who'd rather interrupt her own life, even if it means going a little crazy, than grow up.

Susanna is thrown in with a turbulent gallery of disturbed young women. They range from a girl who tried to burn her own face off to one who won't eat anything but chicken from her father's deli (she stores the carcasses under the bed). Most of the patients are harmless, but Lisa (Angelina Jolie) a heartless, charismatic sociopath, delights in her destructive power. Jolie brings the kind of combustible sexuality to the screen that our movies, in the age of Meg Ryan have been missing for too long. As Susanna and Lisa become comrades, then enemies, Susanna becomes like a space cadet fighting a secret war with herself, and through Lisa she plays out that war. The film allows Ryder to trace Susanna's gradual emergence from her "borderline" state as she confronts the cruel truth of mental illness.

Directed with satisfying authority by James Mangold, "Girl Interrupted" is really about the thorny neurotic underside of a contemporary young woman's struggle to leave childhood behind. By the end, you feel that Ryder, at long last, has done that as an actress.