Girl Interrupted

GIRL, INTERRUPTED (1999)

Girl, Interrupted is the story of Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder, also the producer of this flick) who, as an eighteen year old at the end of the '60s, ends up being institutionalized and is forced to figure whether she's crazy, depressed or just a big drama queen. While there she meets a group of residents including the charismatic sociopath Lisa (played by Angelina Jolie), with whom she develops a very complex relationship.

There should be such a thing as full disclosure for movie critics. It seems somehow impossible, somehow utterly untrue, to believe that people who apparently love the movies enough to get jobs reviewing them (or, like me, review them just for the hell of it) would remain utterly and completely unfazed by the things they see, by the stories that they are told, and by the people who tell them.

About the fifth time that Winona Ryder did something in this movie that made me cringe, that somehow seemed to ring Of course, I still remember fondly all the good times we never had.... essentially flat and untrue, I really had to question if she was as bad as she seemed. Because the feeling of my cringing, my embarrassment, seemed somehow too partial for it to be more than an aesthetic reaction. And it seemed somehow familiar. As the movie leisurely rolled into its second hour, I came up with a thought that distressed me greatly: had I somehow dated Winona Ryder and forgotten it completely? Because the feeling I had when watching Winona sort of mince her way through a scene, or do a completely inefficient job of playing a sexually active woman, was exactly the same sort of feeling when I broke up with the secretary at the law firm that I worked at and then had to watch her interact with our co-workers with a transparent insincerity. It's like when you see an ex and something about them embarrasses you deeply. Maybe it's just embarrassment at seeing somebody you once found so completely charming, and you can only see now as just a person, maybe a deeply flawed person (as, let's face it, pretty much all people are).

How else to explain why I would feel that exact form of embarrassment in watching Winona giggle with Angelina Jolie as they strum the guitar and sing to a fellow inmate locked up in solitary? Obviously, I must have at some point dated Winona Ryder. As the minutes of the movie seemed to feel like the slow passing of seasons, I contemplated when in my life I could have dated Ms. Ryder and how I could have forgotten such a thing.

After much careful self scrutiny (and examination of my watch) I decided that I had not in fact ever dated Winona Ryder. Embarrassingly enough, I apparently had such a strong crush on Winona for many years of my life that it was as if I dated her, and could now only see in her performance the flaws of someone that I used to, without even knowing it, unconditionally love.

So I don't think that this review of Girl, Interrupted, written by a guy who apparently had the full arc of a relationship with Winona Ryder entirely in his head could be considered impartial by any stretch of the imagination. And, in fact, I can't help but look at my enjoyment of Angelina Jolie's star caliber performance without a similarly strong suspicion. Was Jolie's performance that good, or is it one of those situations where you see the slightly flirtatious new paralegal at the water cooler, and she says something to you, and all of a sudden you see her as incredibly intelligent and obviously gifted and endlessly fascinating? Surely the fact that, not too long ago at work, no matter what someone said to me, my first remark to them was "Billy Bob Thornton married Angelina Jolie. Did you hear me? Billy Bob Thornton." is indicative that my appreciation for Ms. Jolie's performance might be a bit, um, tainted..

As codified as Kabuki Theater That having been said, Girl, Interrupted is so interminably long that even I could come up with some thoughts about the movie that were not based on my secret fantasy life. For example, on seeing this movie and The Bell Jar on HBO one night at 3:00 a.m. at my friend Mosby's house back in 1980 (with the fervent hope of glimpsing breasts, of course) I concluded that the "girl goes insane" film genre is apparently as rigorously codified as Kabuki theater. Let's see, two female characters, one on the cusp of crazy, one charismatic and nuts? Check. Sublimated or not-so-sublimated sexual attraction between the two characters? Check. Self/other confusion between the two characters, with the voices of reason warning the chick on the edge about the psychotic chick? Check. Someone ending up hanging themselves, which is usually the catalyst for chick on the edge to want to heal? Chick--I mean, check. Despite all the obvious care everyone put into this movie, Girl, Interrupted brings little new to the party, apart from the admittedly cool punctuation trick of putting the comma between Girl and Interrupted, and two very attractive actresses, one of whom should have probably gone to college and gotten out of the movie actress thing for a little while. Having come clean about my biases (and my extraordinarily rich fantasy life), I hope that you'll believe me when I say that Girl, Interrupted should be for most of us Movie, Avoided.

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