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James Mangold (USA, 1963) debuted with Heavy (1995) and
Cop Land (1997).
Girl, Interrupted (1999), an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's
1993 memoir, is a psychological drama and period piece
marred by the typical happy ending of Hollywood melodramas but boasting
two intense character studies: a teenager who discovers that she
finds herself more at home in a place where everybody is mentally ill than in her own family's bourgeois environment, and a rebel who is the female version of the nihilistic juvenile delinquents and easily becomes more charismatic every time she plunges more into self-destruction (a female version of Jack Nicholson's character in Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").
The mental hospital is a territory mined by
Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) and
Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" (1963).
The film takes inspiration as much from those books as from
Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of 1993.
In 1967 the 18-year-old Susanna (Winona Ryder) tries to kill herself by mixing a bottle of aspirin with vodka.
She tells a shrink "My hands have no bones".
Her parents convince her to commit herself to a nearby upscale mental hospital, where she friendly welcomed by supervising nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) and is diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder" by obnoxious incompetent psychiatrist Melvin. Susanna claims that she didn't want to kill herself, that she wanted to cure a headache, which is hard to believe, and that she wants to become a writer.
Flashbacks show us that she was uncomfortable mingling with her parents
upper middle class at their formal parties, that she had a one-night stand with the father of a schoolmate, that she fells asleep at her graduation, that she is the only student of her class not to enter a major college, and that she had a nice boyfriend, Toby.
She is assigned to be roommate with Georgina, a compulsive liar. She just moved in that the nurses escort in a wild girl, Lisa (Angelina Jolie), who attacks Susanna because she's occupying the bed of her best friend Jamie. Lisa doesn't know that Jamie killed herself by hanging herself with a volleyball net after Lisa ran away. Lisa has just been caught and brought back.
The other patients are all young women from wealthy familues. Daisy is an obsessive-compulsive bulimic obsessed with laxatives and roast chicken who is confident her rich father is buying her an apartment.
Polly, regressed to childhood after a fire that left her face disfigured, loves the guitar that is usually locked away.
They are all in awe of rebellious misfit and semi-sociopath Lisa who has been resisting therapy and being punished for eight years. Susanna documents everything in her journal.
Lisa starts liking Susanna, who is by far the sanest girl in the ward, and so Susanna discovers that
Lisa leads the girls in nocturnal escapades through the hospital's underground tunnels
One day Valerie escorts the girls to an icecream parlor in town and Susanna is recognized by the wife of the man she slept with. Lisa insults the woman and relieves Susanna's guilt.
Daisy moves out and into the apartment bought for her by her father.
One day Toby shows up and tries to convince her to flee with him to Canada because he has been drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Susanna tells him in tears that she feels home with the madwomen.
Later that night, when Polly has a breakdown, Susanna and Lisa steal the guitar and play a hit song for Polly.
When the male orderly arrives, Susanna seduces him knowing that he has a crush on her.
In the morning Valerie finds all of them asleep in front of Polly's room and sends Lisa to electroconvulsive therapy.
Lisa escapes solitary confinement and convinces Susanna to join her. They hitchhike and are given a ride to town by three hippies who then take them to a party where everybody is stoned. Lisa takes advantage and steals some money. They show up at Daisy's apartment and offer her valium. Lisa shouts the truth at Daisy: that the apartment is a love nest where her father abuses her and that Daisy has scars on her arms because she thinks of killing herself but doesn't have the courage. In the morning Susanna finds that Daisy hanged herself. Lisa calmly steals Daisy's money and leaves, while Susanna remains in tears and is eventually escorted back to the hospital.
She adopts Daisy's kitten, which becomes also Polly's favorite.
The fact that Susanna surrendered endears her to the chief psychiatrist Sonia (Vanessa Redgrave) who eventually approves her release. The day before her release, Lisa is found and brought back. Lisa is now at her most vicious towards Susanna. At night she steals Susanna's journal and reads it to Georgina and Polly in the underground tunnels. The girls are shocked by what Susanna wrote abou them. Susanna finds them and is verbally attacked. Susanna runs away in tears chased by Lisa who keeps insulting her. Finally, Susanna stops and confronts Lisa, calling her a dead person. It is now Lisa who breaks down in tears.
The following day Valerie allows Susanna to visit Lisa who is strapped to a bed in solitary confinement and forgives her. Susanna leaves Polly the kitten and everybody hugs her when she leaves in the same taxi who took her there.
Then came
Identity (2003), the
biopic Walk the Line (2005) of a singer-songwriter,
the remake of Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Knight and Day (2010),
two movies of the X-Men franchise such as The Wolverine (2013) and Logan (2017),
the fifth film of the franchise Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023),
the biopic A Complete Unknown (2024), also of a singer-songwriter (Bob Dylan).
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