Girl, Interrupted
Director: James Mangold Run Time: 127 min. Format: DCP Rating: R Release Year: 1999
Starring: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave, Whoopi Goldberg
Based on a novel of the same name, Girl, Interrupted details the instability felt by a generation during the turbulent socio-political climate of the late 1960s through the lives of complicated young women at a mental institution. Committed for various reasons, ranging from food disorders to incest to suicide attempts, their stories intertwine with the main character Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) whose memoir narrates the film. She has unwittingly signed herself into the hospital after a suicide attempt and it becomes a place where she is shocked into the realities it houses and the boundaries of madness. Not unlike Randle in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, Susanna is on a self-destructive bent but harnesses the ability to decide whether she’d go over the edge into insanity or pull herself back into the world.