So I sort of ran out of movie remakes to watch so until I find some, I’m going to post about my favorite 80/90s movies since I’ve seen so many. To kick off this new chapter, I’m going to talk about the movie that suddenly started trending on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram (and I totally understand why).
I watch Girl, Interrupted literally 100 times growing up because I was OBSESSED with Winona Ryder and Brittany Murphy. I still kind of am since I still watch Clueless and Heathers literally every day. This movie also has a special place in my heart because it’s one of the only movies that is a book adaptation where I actually read the book.
Girl, Interrupted follows the main character Susanna Kaysen during her stay at a mental hospital to treat her Borderline Personality Disorder ( for those who don’t know, BPD is characterized as having an unstable self-image and image of the people. People who have this disorder have difficulty keeping friends, hobbies, or anything that requires stability.) There she meets Lisa who has Antisocial Personality Disorder ( which means she manipulates, exploits, and violates other people’s rights for her own gain without remorse) and the two instantly hit it off and become best friends.
Hanging out with Lisa feels liberating for Susanna and they cause all sorts of trouble for the hospital staff and the other patients, their most frequent victim being a girl named Daisy who is in for her eating disorder and sexual abuse history. During one of their encounters, Lisa and Susanna go to Daisy’s room to trade their prescription. While in the room, Susanna asks Daisy why she only eats rotisserie chicken and why she never eats in the cafeteria. Daisy reveals that if she tried to eat anything else, she would throw up and she feel ashamed eating in the cafeteria and having people watch her. While this conversation is going on Lisa peeks under Daisy’s bed and sees that she’s been hiding her half-eaten chicken under her bed. Instead of giving Daisy her privacy, Lisa mocks and ridicules her in front of Susanna.
In another scene, Lisa and Susanna escape the hospital and decide to hide out at Daisy’s house since she was released a few days before. While visiting, instead of being grateful, Lisa again mocks and ridicules Daisy not about her eating order this time, but about the sexual abuse she endured from her father. This pushes Daisy over the edge and causes her to commit suicide.
After Daisy’s death, Susanna begins to analyze her friendship with Lisa and realizes that if she sticks with her, shell never ends up leaving the hospital. She’ll be stuck just like Lisa who is constantly being released and brought back. Susanna decides to take her to stay at the hospital seriously and makes steps towards improvement which includes dropping Lisa as a friend. After a few months, Susanna is released, leaving Lisa heartbroken for the first time in her life.
I think the reason why this movie is so good in my opinion is because of the way that they depict mental health. When movies are made about mental health, they usually focus on the very extreme disorders like schizophrenia or common ones like depression. I liked that there were characters who had disorders that many people don’t know about like antisocial. I also like that they focused on how reflective mental health is. People who have mental health disorders can easily get swept up in a life that is not their own just like how Susanna got swept up in Lisa’s life and almost lost herself. It’s super important that movies that depict mental health do it in a respectful and accurate manner and this movie did just that.