Going to the Movies

She had a suitcase. She hopped into my cab. "McLean Hospital," she said in a low voice. We said nothing the whole way there. I pulled up to the main entrance. She paid me and got out. "Good luck," I managed to say to her. I thought I detected a grateful sign of acknowledgment. Then the night swallowed her whole.

That was more than a quarter century ago in my previous incarnation as a cab driver in the Boston area. Not long ago, I popped in a video of Girl Interrupted, based on the true story of Susan Kaysen's stay at McLean Hospital back in the sixties. Very soon into the film, a cab pulls up outside the door. "It's better this way," her psychiatrist advises her, in response to her question why her mother isn't driving her. She has a suitcase. She hops into the cab.

Suddenly, I'm reliving the past, only from the perspective of my passenger. There is Winona Ryder's face, a picture of betrayed trust - confused, tormented, bewildered - in what amounts to a long slow ride to the gallows. And from the rearview mirror, there are the cabdriver's eyes, sympathetic but neutral, just some hippie doing his job.

Only days before, Susan Kaysen had attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of aspirin, but her real crime, it seems, is being a difficult to handle teenager. In this day and age, Susan's HMO would have had her back out on the street in three days over the objections of her treating physician, but back then the hospital could hold her there against the will for two or more years on the most spurious of pretexts - that of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Eventually, she learns to play the game, and gets her discharge. Once more she is in a cab, this time on her way home. "Crazy isn't being broken," she contemplates, "or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified."

This is a video well worth renting, but be sure to be in a safe environment when viewing, as the film abounds with potential triggers.

Hilary and Jackie

On one level, we have the tale of tragedy, one of the most gifted musicians of her time - the cellist Jacqueline du Pre - stricken with MS and dead at age 42. On another level we have the story of sibling rivalry between two sisters, and on another level still that of Jackie's musical romance with
the pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim, and ultimately her affair with sister Hilary's husband, with Hilary's consent.

Then I rented the video only to discover yet another wrinkle still - that Jackie displayed all the classic signs of bipolar. I am not sure if this was the intention of Emily Watson who so brilliantly portrayed Jackie or of the filmmakers or of Hilary and Piers du Pre, authors of the book on which the film is based. In all probability, Jackie never would have been diagnosed in the first place. In many ways the Jackie shown here fits the movie stereotype of the highstrung artist, complete with the obligatory "mad" scene. Yet it is here that the movie rises above the usual clichés and achieves true greatness. Jackie is not slamming down the phone or storming out the door or throwing objects around the room. Instead, sister Hilary finds her disrobed in the cold outdoors, scratched and torn from the underbrush, knees drawn up under her chin, alternately clasping herself to keep warm and hacking at her wrists with an object.

It is a picture of deep despair we have all felt and some of us felt too much.

It is also our little secret. No one else but us really has to know. Great artists, after all, are granted a certain license to be eccentric and even slightly mad. And that is what most viewers probably thought they saw. But we know better. It is an insight into a tormented kind of genius that the filmmakers have shared with us and only us. Jacqueline du Pre, incidentally, would live another 14 years after being diagnosed with MS, much of it confined to a wheelchair. A brief remission allowed her to return to performing, but a subsequent relapse would deprive her of her beloved cello. In the twelve years since her death in 1987 her legend has only grown, with the kind of cult status reserved for rock stars and movie celebs.

Not surprisingly, many admirers took serious umbrage to the movie, particularly over the film's acceptance of Hilary's version of events. How much more strenuously would they have objected, I wonder, had Jackie's probable bipolar been made more obvious? And would it have drawn louder protests than the revelation that she slept with her sister's husband?

"A few can touch the Magic String
and noisy Fame is proud to win them
Alas for those who never sing
And die with all their music in them"

Oliver Wendell Holmes (Posted on a Jacqueline du Pre website.)

Shine

David Helfgott, the Australian pianist on whom this movie is based, in real life performs on the same level as tenor Andrea Bocelli sings, but that is not the point. This is a movie about a man winning back his life, and one hardly needs to arise from the ashes as a concert hall Olympian to emerge as a true hero.

Almost a supporting character in this film is the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 3, known to intimates and close acquaintances as "The Rock Three." Everest or K2 might be a more appropriate term. Someone once calculated the energy expended getting through a performance of this piece equated to something like a coal car and a half of coal being shoveled, and I have no reason to doubt this. The pianist is compelled to labor nonstop at a high level of intensity over a fiendishly complex score for a good 45 minutes with only minimal support from the orchestra. I once caught a live performance, and concluded this was truly The Rock Three in a monumentally Everest-K2 sense.

The Rock Three first makes its appearance in David's life as a boy growing up in a reign of terror imposed by his abusive and controlling father. Later, as a young music student in London, David has the ambition to perform The Rock for his student recital. The movie may take liberties here in portraying his performance as the locus of his nervous breakdown, but the crashing chords cascading through the concert hall no doubt reasonably approximated the actual interior implosion of his brain.

We next find David back in an institution in Australia some 25 years later. Amazingly, following doctors orders, he has not played piano in all that time. We are not told what David's condition is. Two news magazine features aired in the wake of the film shed no light on the topic, but the authors of Manic Depression and Creativity (by Hershman and Lieb) speculate he has bipolar disorder, and in the movie actor Geoffrey Rush portrays David in one lesser known characteristic of the illness - great difficulty in switching off from one activity to another. He literally can't get out of the water once he's in it, be it a shower or a pool, and even coming in out of the rain is a major undertaking.

Ultimately, though, with the help of first one woman who rescues him from the institution and then a second woman who would become his wife, David gets back on the piano. He is playing. He is performing. He is winning people over. He is winning his back his life.

And the Rock Three is churning out chords in triumphant life-affirming clusters.

The movie was released the same year as The English Patient, so it didn't get the Oscar for best picture it deserved. Instead it will have to settle for a "McMan" as one of my favorites of all time.

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Discussions

MLB (Dec 20, 2000): GIRL, INTERRUPTED- YES, A PROFOUND MOVIE MAKING A REMARKABLE STATEMENT. I WATCHED IT THREE TIMES, BECAUSE I PERSONALLY RELATED TO EACH OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL.
ANOTHER MOVIE IS: "THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE", ALSO ON MY LIST REGARDING PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES.

No Name (Jan 25, 20001): JOHN, YOU DID IT AGAIN! I HAVE WATCHED "HILARY AND JACKIE" FIVE TIMES AND RECORDED THE SOUNDTRACK. THE MOVIE AND MUSIC IS SO MOVING. THE ACTORS ARE SUPERB AND I TOO DETECTED THE BI-POLAR IN JACKIE DU PRE. I AM UNABLE TO GET A COPY OF HER BIOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY HILARY AND PIERS DUPRE.
SHINE-ANOTHER HEART WRENCHING FILM FOR ME. ALL THE SIGNS OF A GENIUS AT WORK.SO, REMARKABLY INTENSE YET EMOTIONALLY STIRRING.

Anonymous (Jan 12, 2002): The movie, based on lies about a man's life, has been condemned by several schizophrenia groups. Please read both sides of the story ("Out of Tune" by his sister) before coming up with premature and immature conclusions.

McMan (Jan 12): Hi, Anonymous. I don't need the permission of other groups to form my own opinion. The movie played loose with the facts and a sibling has a more idealized view of growing up - nothing new about that. I haven't read the sister's piece, but I do take issue with your implication that the sane member of the family's point of view is more valid than the person with the mental illness. If you hated this review, you're going to really hate my review of A Beautiful Mind.

Marn (March 18, 2004): Just watched Girl, Interrupted in March of 2004. I have just received the dx of bpd. From what I've read about the movie, and regarding the disorder, I think the movie has more genius than it has been given credit for. For one thing, people in my circle of influence almost unanimously believe there is nothing wrong with me. This is clear in the movie for Susana, and I think it perhaps is a main point of the movie. Another main point of the movie seems to be that a person diagnosed with bpd does have the choice whether or not to recover. How many times have people told me that I do not recover (from various other diagnoses) because I don't want to! This is asinine ridiculous, for someone to accuse me of such a thing. It is also practicing medicine without a license. But the movie helps me hope to recover fully.

Angela (May 17, 2004): I was diagnosed Bipolar last year after a very long ride with it. I am now on Lithium and in therapy with is ongoing. I have even attempted suicide before...not because I was just so depressed but because I just thought that I would be better off and my family without this issue to deal with. I have not seen the movie Shine although I think I will check it out. I did however see The Girl Interrupted and it was very intense for me. Many of the thoughts and ideas expressed...I could identify with since I was in and out hospitals myself many many times. But I agree with the other person who said that a big point was somehow made in that some how....a person with Bipolar or any mental illness for that matter can simply...decide or not decide to get better...I have experienced that kind of thinking myself many times and it only discouraged me because I felt that I was indeed doing all that I could, trying, whatever....and yet I was very ill. How can anyone just say....oh there is nothing wrong. I think it's just a way of coping out for them...so they don't have to do anything, or care. I hate to sound that way but I am now dealing with people about my teenage daughter on similar issues. She has not yet received a diagnosis, but we think she will soon. I have done much reading on Bipolar and it is known to run in families. I have even been accused of trying to 'put this illness' on my daughter so that I would not be the only one with it. That is so utterly STUPID. Why would I wish this illness on anyone? well I don't know the answer for sure, but I will continue to fight for my daughter to get on meds as she needs help as I once did and I hope that she does not have to suffer in silence as I did for over 20 years waiting to find out what if anything could possibly be done to help. I guess what I'm saying is....I was another girl interrupted and I don't want the ignorance of others to make my daughter into yet another one...

Ruth (Sept 7, 2004): I watched shine with my classmates because of the film viewing activity by our Professor Melvin. I never expect that this film really touch my life because my life is so related to him, my parents control my decision, about my future. i really appreciate this film ,hoping that i could be like David , how he become strong and move on despite the problem he have.

Beverly (Jan 20, 2005): Being Borderline sucks I can never think straight it takes me forever to make decisions i never feel pretty nothing is ever good enough i am never happy!!!!!!!!

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John McManamy

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