Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Based on writer Susanna Kaysen's account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the 1960s.

Director:

James Mangold

Writers:

Susanna Kaysen (book), James Mangold (screenplay),

Stars:

Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg

Won 1 Oscar. Another 6 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Winona Ryder	...	Susanna Kaysen
Angelina Jolie	...	Lisa Rowe
Whoopi Goldberg	...	Valerie Owens, RN
Brittany Murphy	...	Daisy Randone
Clea DuVall	...	Georgina Tuskin (as Clea Duvall)
Elisabeth Moss	...	Polly 'Torch' Clark
Vanessa Redgrave	...	Dr. Sonia Wick
Jared Leto	...	Toby Jacobs
Jeffrey Tambor	...	Dr. Melvin Potts
Angela Bettis	...	Janet Webber
Jillian Armenante	...	Cynthia Crowley
Drucie McDaniel	...	M.G.
Alison Claire	...	Nurse Gretta
Christina Myers	...	Nurse Margie
Joanna Kerns	...	Annette Kaysen

Storyline

Susanna is rushed to the hospital. Afterwards she discusses this with a psychiatrist. She had been having some delusions. She had also been having an affair with the husband of her parents' friend. The doctor suggests that combining a bottle of aspirin and a bottle of vodka was a suicide attempt. This she denies. He recommends a short period of rest at Claymoore. Claymoore is a private mental hospital full of noisy, crazy people. Georgina is a pathological liar. Polly has been badly scarred by fire. Daisy won't eat in the presence of other people. Lisa is a sociopath, the biggest exasperation for the staff - like Nurse Valerie - and the biggest influence on the other girls in the hospital. Lisa has a history of escapes, so gaining access to personal medical files is not a problem... Susanna's boyfriend Toby is concerned that she seems too comfortable living with her institutionalized friends...

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Plot Keywords:

friend | suicide | 1960s | suicide attempt | mental hospital | 

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Taglines:

Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy

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Genres:

Biography | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong language and content relating to drugs, sexuality and suicide

Details

Country:

USA Germany

Language:

English

Release Date:

14 January 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Inocencia interrumpida

Filming Locations:

Hanover, Pennsylvania, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$40,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£148,261 (UK) (24 March 2000)

Gross:

$28,871,190 (USA) (28 April 2000)

Company Credits

Production Co:

3 Art Entertainment, Columbia Pictures Corporation, Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Company Medien KG

Technical Specs

Runtime:

127 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital SDDS (8 channels)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Phedon Papamichael Jr. was supposed to be director of photography on the film but had to pull out due to work on The Million Dollar Hotel. He would later team up with James Mangold on Identity and has served as director of photography on all his films since then.

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Goofs

The story shows the draft lottery taking place before Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. King was assassinated in 1968, and the first draft lottery was in December, 1969.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Susanna: [narrating] Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60s. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.

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Connections

Referenced in Shameless: Fiona Interrupted (2012)

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Soundtracks

"Bookends"
Written by Paul Simon
Performed by Simon & Garfunkel (as Simon and Garfunkel)
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

User Reviews

That Girl

"Borderline personality disorder" is one of those phrases that says more about the people who invented it than it does about the patient it's supposed to describe. When Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) the 18-year old heroine of "Girl Interrupted" enters Claymoore hospital, a psychiatric facility outside Boston, she is diagnosed with the syndrome - but in fact, all she's done is made a hapless suicide attempt and acted slack and mopey and lost in her sober daydreams. Her personality isn't borderline -- it's self-pitying and indulgent. Fortunately, the film understands this. Set in 1967, and adapted from Kaysen's memoir of her two-year experience as an adolescent in the throes of a middle-class crack up, "Girl Interrupted" is shrewd, tough and lively - a junior-league "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that never makes the mistake of portraying its protagonist as a victim-naif. She's more like the original poster child for Prozac Nation: a girl who'd rather interrupt her own life, even if it means going a little crazy, than grow up.

Susanna is thrown in with a turbulent gallery of disturbed young women. They range from a girl who tried to burn her own face off to one who won't eat anything but chicken from her father's deli (she stores the carcasses under the bed). Most of the patients are harmless, but Lisa (Angelina Jolie) a heartless, charismatic sociopath, delights in her destructive power. Jolie brings the kind of combustible sexuality to the screen that our movies, in the age of Meg Ryan have been missing for too long. As Susanna and Lisa become comrades, then enemies, Susanna becomes like a space cadet fighting a secret war with herself, and through Lisa she plays out that war. The film allows Ryder to trace Susanna's gradual emergence from her "borderline" state as she confronts the cruel truth of mental illness.

Directed with satisfying authority by James Mangold, "Girl Interrupted" is really about the thorny neurotic underside of a contemporary young woman's struggle to leave childhood behind. By the end, you feel that Ryder, at long last, has done that as an actress.