The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, January 19, 2000, Encore!, Page 4, Image 18
■pi | Movies
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Film explores freedom, sanity
between the nurses and their patients.
Susanna soon becomes accepting of her place
in the ward with her friends. The doctors notice that
she has reached a plateau in her recovery, and Va
lerie (Whoopi Goldberg) uiges Susanna to get her
priorities in order. “You do not belong here,” she
says. Ryder still struggles to find her place in the con
fusing world of the late 1960s. Even when her sup
posed boyfriend offers to take her to Canada, she in
sists that her place is at Claymoore with the other
girls. She has become complacent.
Without giving too much away, the next course
of events offers Susanna the ultimate choice - to
be cured or to relapse. Are these women products
of their environment, or are they self-fulfilling pa
tients who will be only as healthy as they allow? Can
they find the strength to join the rest of the coun
try and lash out against complacency?
In what some are calling a female version of
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Ryder and
Jolie deliver stellar performances as lost women in
a lost world. Ryder actually doubled as executive
producer to make this movie adaptation of real-life
Susanna Kaysen’s memoirs. Signed on as director
and screenwriter, James Mangold (“Heavy,” “Cop
Land”) did another outstanding job with an ensem
ble cast. There are no weak links in this film. Even
Courtesy of Columbia Picture:
The Columbia Pictures presentation Girl, Interupted, starring Winona Ryder and
Angelina Jolie, questions the boundaries of freedom and confinement, friendship and
betrayal, and madness and sanity at a time when it seemed as if the whole world mighl
be going crazy
by Kevin Langston
Encore Editor
Though I was not there to bear witness, I hear the late 1960s were a crazy
time in America, perhaps the craziest in modem history. Our country was
thrust into a new age of technology and thinking, a renaissance, if you will.
We were sending people into space, and we were sending many young Amer
icans overseas to fight a war many didn’t approve of. African Americans were
struggling for equality, and women were stepping further away from the home.
The world as everyone knew it was fading fast, and a new, liberal way of
thinking was slamming the door in the face of tradition. America was going
crazy, so it would be neither shock nor surprise if you went crazy with it. This
is where “Girl, Interrupted” takes off.
Winona Ryder plays Susanna Kaysen, a l /-year-old mgn scnooi graduate.
Unlike her classmates, she has no plans of going to college. She has set her
sights on writing, to the dismay of her parents and guidance counselors. She
is struggling with who she is in an age of typical identity crisis, and the
growing generation gap between her and her mother does nothing to ease the
pain. It gets too serious, and Susanna wakes up in the emergency room after
chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. Her excuse: “I had a headache.”
The doctors have told Susanna that she suffers from borderline person
ality disorder, “manifested by uncertainty about self-image, long-term goals,
types of friends or lovers to have and which values to adopt.” By her parents’
wishes, Susanna is sent to Claymoore Hospital’s women’s ward, where she
is supposed to “get some rest.” Though the viewer knows Susanna tried to
take her own life, there is a sense that she doesn’t belong. In her first day,
she meets Lisa (Angelina Jolie), who comers Susanna in her room and inter
rogates her. After the nurses drug Lisa, Susanna is left to adapt to her new
home. At first, she keeps mainly to herself, writing in her diary and observ
ing the cliques of the women’s ward.
Susanna and Lisa kindle a friendship wnen busanna oners ner drugs isne
has obviously not taken them) to Daisy (Brittany Murphy), who has an ob
session with' laxatives. Daisy tries to take advantage of the new girl and not
offer anything in return. Lisa comes to moderate the exchange and insists that
Daisy give them some drugs in return. The exchange goes off without a hitch,
and soon after, Lisa and Susanna become friends. From there, Susanna enters
the social realm of the ward. It then becomes an “us against them” attitude
me souiiuiracK ueueaieiy auu^ lu uie mime, iaie
in today’s attempts to rake in as much money at the record stores as at the
box office.
“Girl, Interrupted” is a complete movie package, and it promises not to
disappoint.
Ratings:
Kevin Langston — 4 of 4 stars
Robert Fleming—4 of 4
Classic film
returns to
big screen
by Kenley Young
Gamecock Critic
It’s the most quotable movie of all time and
the second greatest romance ever captured on film,
right behind Rhett and Scarlett. So many films have
plagiarized from it that it’s no wonder Holly
wood “sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.”
Roger Ebert calls it simply “the movie,” and at
8p.m. today and Thursday, Carolina Productions
will “play it again, Sam.”
Hallelujah! “Casablanca” is coming to the Rus
sell House Theater in all its big-screen glory. And
for those of you errant, wannabe film buffs who’ve
dismissed this classic as “just another boring chick
flick,” what a glorious opportunity to make things
right with the world and yourselves. What a for
tuitous occasion for you to get both an inkling of
the awesome power of Hollywood’s glory days and
a clue as to what constitutes good cinema.
Humphrey Bogart, recently voted the No. 1
screen actor of all time by the American Film In
stitute, catapults himself into the role of his career
as Rick Blaine, owner of the Cafe Americain, epit
ome of the Byronic hero and prototype for every
tormented leading man who ever stepped in
front of a camera.
But “CasablancaY’main attraction islngrid
Beigman, arguably the most striking actress of her
day and unaiguably the movie’s most luminous on
screen presence as the lovely lisa (Watch her.
She actually emits a glow.) It is her guilt, her
confusion, her swirling torrent of emotions that
drive the movie toward its perfection of a cli
max.
And the supporting cast is superbly assembled:
Peter Lorre (the creepy Ugarte), Paul Henreid (li
sa’s husband, Victor Laszlo) and the impeccable
Claude Rains (the corrupt, but somehow likable
Renault). So what if Rains is portraying a French
police officer with a British accent?
And so what if the scriptwriters were furious
ly scribbling bits of dialogue as they played it by
ear and the actors were flying by the seats of
their pants? For that matter, so what if everyone
involved in the making of “Casablanca” was stum
bling all over the process? A masterpiece drafted
in the dark is still a masterpiece, and this one be
longs among the greatest. If you miss the Russell
House Theater’s free showing, you’ll regret it —
“Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow ... but
some day and for the rest of your life.”
Next week in the Russell House:
Clerks and Freaks Double Feature
8 p.m. 1/25-1/27
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