Editorial Product Review:Amazon.com:Based on Susanna Kaysen's acclaimed journal-memoir,
Girl, Interrupted bears 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 nearly 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 institutionalization 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 semipredictable 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
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Buyer Reviews
Average Buyer Rating:
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beautiful team!
Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder make a beautiful team in this psycho movie! They act amazingly in this and so convincing! You feel the pain and the torture they are going through to understand their lives! Enjoy this movie with an open heart!
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Girl, Interrupted
It was an interesting movie, however I was looking for something which more was more educational reguarding Borderline Personalities. Fun Viewing, though.
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A Cautionary Tale of Insanity and Adolescence
"In 1969 the wild ones went to Woodstock; the unlucky ones went to war but if you didn't know where you were going, they sent you to Claymoore." Such was the provocative opening to the theatrical trailer for the film "Girl, Interrupted". This short narrative, however, sets the tone and scene for the world in which 18-year-old Susanna Kaysen struggles to cope with both the mental illness she fights to understand and the world around her which refuses to acknowledge the fight she is waging.
Based on the personal memoir of Susanna Kaysen, "Girl, Interrupted" invites audiences into the bizarre and absurdly funny worlds of mental illness and psychiatric treatment viewed through the psychedelic lens of the late Sixties, a time when some could argue that the world outside of a mental institution was no different than the world within one. Providing viewers with more than just a period piece of a nation wrought with war, social revolution and a drug-induced counter-culture, this Academy Award-winning film is in a class of its own, leading viewers through a heartbreaking journey of self-discovery and self-evaluation, all the while, acquiring an eclectic host of friends and experiences which ultimately shape the process and outcome of that journey. If anything it is a message for adolescents who struggle to find their identity at a pivotal time when being a teenager often means, quite ironically, proving you are an individual by copying everything your friends do. The final narrative of the theatrical trailer puts it into perspective and puts it best, "Sometimes you don't know how to fit in until you find a way to break out."
Customer Rating: -
Not crazy to love this !!!
Girl, Interrupted
I first saw this movie back in 2002 on a free VCD I had got. I remember buying it simply because Winona Ryder was in it, not knowing anything about the movie at all. At that first viewing it was pretty shocking and I put it away not to see it for a second time until today.
It is a wonderful movie, describing the anguish of a group of females in their youth, in a mental institution; particularly that of the narrator and protagonist Susanna Kaysen. She is in here because she had a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. She wasn't suicidal, just had a headache and so disagrees with the opinion of being in a mental institute for this act.
In here she meets a group of misfits, women young mostly with whom she interacts and befriends. Apparently she did not have many young friends in school and is the only female in her class not going on to college. She wants to be a writer and I personally could associate with her trauma relating to the world and the way people chose to identify with this world. If you liked movies about troubled youth such as Gus Van Sant's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Van_Sant Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester or Ron Howard's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Howard_(director) A Beautiful Mind, then you would certainly appreciate this masterpiece and the story is true.
Yes, during the end credits I noticed that the movie is based on a novel by a person named Susanna. Then I looked at my VCD cover and saw "Based on a True Story" stamp on it. So now I am hunting for the novel version which seems more interesting than this movie, which I don't know whether that's possible. Anyways, this story is not about youth or a boring lecture on mental healthcare. It is about Susanna and her diagnosis and how she deals with it. She becomes good friends with a few of the characters in the mental ward and also with one nurse Valerie who is played well here by Whoopi Goldberg. The author Susanna criticised the movie though for fictional scenes added to the movie, but as a movie it is quite thrilling to watch as it is. But it has made me curious to hear the original tale as told by the author Susanna in her novel of the same name.
All in all a refreshing movie and quite possibly the only one starring Angelina Jolie that I have liked. She won many awards for this role, all the top 3 - Academy, Screen and Golden Globe.
I can't imagine any other actress than Winona Ryder in that role as Susanna and she really should have got more recognition than she did for this and other movies.
Quote: "Crazy isn't about being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you, or me, Amplified..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Kaysen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl,_Interrupted_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl,_Interrupted