It's 1967, and 17 year old Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) is like a lot of American teenagers her age—confused, insecure, struggling to make sense of the rapidly changing world around her. The psychiatrist she meets with (courtesy of her parents), however, gives this behavior a name—Borderline Personality Disorder, "manifested by uncertainty about self-image, long-term goals, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt"—and whisks her away to Claymoore. Here, Susanna discovers Lisa, Daisy, Georgina, Polly and Janet—a group of offbeat young women who not only become her closest friends, but light Susanna’s way back to someone she had lost—herself.
Columbia Pictures, in association with Red Wagon Productions and Konrad Pictures, presents Girl, Interrupted, a wry chronicle of Susanna’s two years at Claymoore that questions the boundaries between confinement and freedom, friendship and betrayal, and madness and sanity at a time when it seemed the whole world was going crazy.
At the hospital—"the other Ivy League"—Susanna loses herself in a world of eccentric young women, among them Lisa (Angelina Jolie), a charming sociopath; Daisy (Brittany Murphy), a pampered "Daddy’s girl" with a predilection for rotisserie chicken and laxatives; and Polly (Elisabeth Moss), a burn victim whose heart, unlike her face, remains remarkably unscarred.
Ultimately, Susanna must choose between the world of those who belong on the inside of the institution and the often difficult world of reality on the outside. Guided by no-nonsense ward nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) and the hospital’s head psychiatrist, Dr. Wick (Vanessa Redgrave), Susanna, like Dorothy from Oz, resolves to leave the "parallel universe" behind, reclaim her independence and continue life on her own—and on her own terms.
Based on the searing best-selling memoir by writer Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted stars two-time Academy Award® nominee and Golden Globe winner Ryder (Little Women, The Age of Innocence), two-time Golden Globe winner Jolie (Gia, Wallace) and Academy Award® winners Goldberg (Ghost) and Redgrave (Julia).
In addition, the film co-stars an array of Hollywood’s most promising young actors, including Clea Duvall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Angela Bettis, Jillian Armenante, Drucie McDaniel and Travis Fine, and features the venerable talents of multiple Emmy Award nominee Jeffrey Tambor, Joanna Kerns, Emmy Award winner Mary Kay Place and Kurtwood Smith.
Girl, Interrupted is directed by James Mangold (Cop Land, Heavy) and produced by Douglas Wick (Stuart Little, Wolf, Working Girl) and Cathy Konrad (Cop Land, Scream, Citizen Ruth). Screenplay by James Mangold and Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan. The screenplay is adapted from Susanna Kaysen’s memoir. Ryder and Carol Bodie are the film’s executive producers, Georgia Kacandes serves as co-producer, and Kaysen is the film’s associate producer.
The creative production team includes Academy Award® nominee Jack Green, A.S.C. (Unforgiven), production designer Richard Hoover (Dead Man Walking), costume designer Arianne Phillips (The People vs. Larry Flynt) and film editor Kevin Tent (Citizen Ruth).
(10 votes)
2.
Based on Susanna Kaysen's acclaimed journal-memoir, Girl, Interrupted bears an inevitable resemblance to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and pale comparison to that earlier classic is impossible to avoid. The mental institution settings of both films guarantee a certain degree of déjà vu and at least one Oscar winner (in this case, Angelina Jolie), since playing a loony is any actor's dream gig. Unfortunately, director James Mangold seems to have misplaced the depth and delicacy of his underrated debut, Heavy, despite a great deal of earnest effort by everyone involved. It's easy to see why Winona Ryder chose to star in (and executive-produce) this almost worthy adaptation of Kaysen's book, since it's a strong vehicle for female casting and potent drama. Mangold certainly got the former; whether he succeeded with the latter is not so clear.
To be sure, Ryder conveys the confusion and chaos that signified Kaysen's life during nearly 18 months of voluntary institutionalisation beginning in 1967. But the film seems too eager to embrace the cliché that the "crazies" of the Claymoore women's ward are saner than the war-torn world outside, and lack of narrative focus gives way to a semi-predictable character study. Susanna (Ryder) is labeled with "borderline personality disorder," a diagnosis as ambiguous as her own emotions, and while Jolie chews the scenery as the resident bad-girl sociopath, Ryder effectively conveys an odyssey from vulnerable fear to self-awareness and, finally, to healing. The ensemble cast is uniformly superb, making this drama well worthwhile, even as it treads familiar territory. If it ultimately lacks dramatic impact, Girl, Interrupted makes it painfully clear that the boundaries of dysfunction are hazy in a world where everyone's crazy once in a while. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
(10 votes)
3.
"One Of The Best Films Of The Year!" -Paul Tatara, CNN.COM
Two time Oscar-nominee Winona Ryder stars in the fascinating true story of a young woman's life-altering stay at a famous psychiatric hospital in the turbulent late 1960s.
Questionably diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Susanna (Winona Ryder) rebels against head nurse (Whoopi Goldberg) and top psychiatrist (Vanessa Redgrave), choosing instead to befriend the resident "loonies" -- a group of troubled women including the seductively charismatic sociopath Lisa (Angelina Jolie).
But Susanna quickly learns that if she wants her freedom, she'll have to face the person who terrifies her most of all: herself.
(6 votes)
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