Movie #4

Girl, Interrupted was a bit close to home.  I spent the last quarter of the movie (at least) curled up, not always looking at the screen.  However, I am very glad I have now seen this.

As an artistic type, I can relate to many of Susanna's problems.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.  An older brother told me that if you wanted to be a writer, you had to be something else as well.  Writers didn't earn money, and adults needed money to buy things like food.  Goodbye dream... So I became a musician instead.  Funny.

We as humans function better when we have a meaningful purpose in life.  Sometimes that purpose is hard to determine, especially if all we know is we don't want to turn out like our mothers.  It has been very helpful in recent years for me to hear (and receive) the message that no-one else lives me better than me.  I might think that I'm doing something wrong, I'm not passing all the steps that Everyone Else does, but They're Not Me.  When I'm happiest, I'm doing what I love, I'm around people who appreciate what I do, I can help others be happier in themselves.  Similarly with Susanna, when she flashes back to a session with a Guidance Counselor, she is told Everyone Else is going to college, and what is she *actually* going to do, apart from write?  Depression and admittance to a psychiatric hospital followed.  Later, in a pre-release session from the hospital, those in power accept that when she is out in the real world, she will write.  A much more grounded person has emerged.

This more grounded person is now someone who can look out for others and own who she is.  The turning point in her treatment comes when the head nurse throws her in a cold bath and tells her to stop throwing away her life.  Literally and figuratively a wake-up call.  Don't waste what you have.  Take something for granted now, and you may not have it tomorrow.  This is the theme for so many movies - you'd think we'd have got the message by now.  Something I appreciated in this part was that the answers were not coming from the powerful people (doctors) but from the more ordinary people (a black nurse).* 

Another side of this story is the psychiatric hospital genre.  What made me think here though was, how do we as a society judge who should be Inside or Outside?  We accept the really with which we are presented.  'Normal' is just the fatter part of the bell curve.   And, was there really anything in Susanna's problem apart from high intelligence and too many choices in life?

*Coincidentally, this was also the theme of the sermon I heard Sunday morning:  Look for God in the Everyday.