Girl Interrupted’ Mental Illness Essay

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The movie I chose is called Girl, Interrupted. This movie is an older one but I thought it was a really well-done movie. Angelina Jolie is an absolutely phenomenal actress. Her performance alone is worth watching the movie for. The cinematography was innovative, but not distractingly so Girl Interrupted shines primarily for its dramatic power, not as a mind-blowing work of art. It will certainly probe you to question your way of seeing the world at least psychologically. 

The movie takes place primarily in the women’s ward of a mental institution and follows the dynamic friendship between Lisa (Jolie’s character) and Suzanna. Lisa is a kinetic, dynamic personality who cuts right to the truth of things. Her truth knows no boundaries, and she is a controlling person prone to violence. Her piercing insights about people and social recklessness led her to be institutionalized as a sociopath. This is not a depressing film. Rather, it is surprisingly life-affirming. 

This movie is at the forefront of portraying mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder, and Susannah from Girl Interrupted now this is the one that I mentioned earlier who was actually written with borderline personality disorder because the character Susannah is actually a real person and Girl Interrupted is a movie that’s based off of a memoir written by a lady called Susannah, so we 100% know that this character has borderline personality disorder and it’s even mentioned in the film pretty much starts with a suicide attempt that lands Susannah in hospital some people have said this is a half-hearted suicide attempt Susannah is a self Harmer, and she originally started by scratching her face but that was too obvious, so she switched to wrist banging self-harm and impulsive behavior is a symptom of borderline personality I think Susannah is fascinating because I think a lot of people would wouldn’t immediately call her borderline we like we don’t see a huge amount of symptoms reflected in the film from Susannah I think she’s a good example of a quiet borderline which I’ve not done too much research into like the science of the quiet borderline, so I don’t know if that’s kind of just a nickname or of whether that has some sort of scientific basis but it’s basically exactly what you think it would be someone who has BPD but is perhaps more on the quiet reserved side. 

We do definitely see Susanna have her moments though like when she was screaming at their mental health nurse while she was in the bathtub she’s asking the nurse what’s wrong with her what’s going on inside her head, and than she’s screaming get me out of this faster than the nurse turns around and says to her get yourself out of the bathtub and that kind of stands out in my mind as do a lot of the quotes in the film that one particularly because a lot of people say that all the line adults are kind of stuck in this childish mentality they’re stuck with childish tantrum-like behavior and although I’m not a huge fan of the wording around that sometimes I think people say it very flippantly can and it can almost be like offensive but I do think there’s something true in with stuck in the in this erratic behavior this dysregulated behavior as would a child be because the child isn’t born knowing how to regulate their emotions that’s something that they’re taught, and they develop and that stood out to me when Susanna was like get me out the bathroom the nurse was like get yourself out of the bath a lot of people with BPD identified with Lisa Moore who was king of the companion of Susanna within the Hospital um so it’s interesting to me that some people relate with her more, but she’s very much like a very brash outgoing sort of character.

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