Minds In Progress (Part II): Sanity Is Not the Opposite of Vibrancy

[Continued from "Part I" here.]

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: The Battle of Imagination and Order

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
- George Gascoigne, Renaissance poet

"I turned down a job in 'Cuckoo's Nest' for this?!"
- John Belushi, bemoaning how Saturday Night Live cost him a film role

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is based on Ken Kesey's novel about Randall P. McMurphy, a rebellious spirit who pretends to be insane to trade prison for the comfy (or so he thinks) environs of the mental institution. All leering smiles, arched eyebrows, and devilish merriment, McCurphy is a virtuoso ne'er-do-well; a man propelled by a mania of bravura horniness, hot temper, and humanity that is infectious, inspiring, and eventually affects the lives of his fellow inmates. Although released in 1975, the story is a child of the '60s in its ethos of the spirit and spirited.

One key to the story's fierce impact is its implicit dictum: "Treatment does not consist of an over-rationalized, too rigidly organized, sanitized, neutralized, and controlled version of reality, for the sake of which a patient can be trained to adjust their behavior and thoughts; rather, it lies in offering the patient a vision of the nature of his or her own humanity, damaged but still viable, organic, capable of joy and humor, anger and growth, one that tends toward healing and fulfillment; and sanity is possible because a person can learn to acknowledge all the rage, heartbreak, grotesquerie, absurdity, and fundamentally uncontrollable, unsatisfactory nature of reality, yet survive it and remain alive to life without resorting to the illusory and painful safety of an ill mind." If repression and neuroses consist of a mind fitfully and fruitlessly trying to control what the heart must endure, then the most effective treatment evokes a balance between heart and mind, not merely using pre-conceived psychological models designed to make being human (appear) safer. It touches emotional aspirations locked in a broken psyche; seeds of life-force undiscovered, unguarded, and free, subject to aches and passions that cannot be tampered, only harnessed.

A less mature definition of sanity believes it can be delivered as a needle injects serum into the vein: in dosed units of right words, right medicines, and correct beliefs signifying a rote, book-learned, conventionally agreed-upon and technologically accessible version of reality. At its extremes, it seeks to dampen spirits by blindly honoring a modern god of scientific "objectivity," generically administered to "solve" the human problem. Cuckoo's Nest tells us although technology is an efficient tool it is not a substitute for a call to the soul. The film strikes a deep chord: the essential conflict between imagination and order, between those seeking to liberate themselves and other people, or those who fundamentally mistrust humanity, and so feel they must control it.

Control is embodied by sadistic Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who runs the ward and enters a battle of wills for the inmate's allegiance with McMurphy. Although lawless and crude, McMurphy is not only not out of touch with reality, or claimed by some dissociative state; he is that rare man in touch with others' humanity and gloriously possessed by life in the moment. Most dangerously, his antics even begin to exert healing on his fellow inmates. On a raucous field trip improvised by McMurphy, replete with booze and women, the inmates' fevered brains get a watery dose of unhindered abandon; breathing outdoor, uninhibited air, they forget themselves enough to question their imprisonment. Eventually, the ensuing challenge of authority leads to tragedy.

Imagination is needed for healing. Denied the World Series on TV after a ward "vote," McMurphy decides to call the game anyway, without benefit of a TV set—pantomiming all the thrills and excitement. Befuddled, the others soon become entranced by a baseball game not really happening. It is a wonderfully realized instance of imagination triumphing over physical limit; not a delusion that harms, but a creative illusion that frees. Cuckoo's Nest is the gold standard for a central attitude in American cinema: sanity is not the opposite of vibrancy. As French painter Jean Dubuffet put it: "For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity."

Without sentimentality, the film delivers a cosmic struggle between the limits imposed through a constrictive system of mind or The State, and the individual seeking liberation from societal neurosis. True liberation, it says, is ultimately not given by one psychological technique or ideology or doctor; it is grasped by the suffering with her whole being: physical, spiritual, existential, sexual. A very American conceit: rebellion by humanity against its self-imposed inhumane restraints as manifested in the delusion and prejudice of bureaucratic "necessity."

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Ordinary People

In 1977's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (in its day, this phrase made it into the popular lexicon as a synonym for "life is difficult"), Kathleen Quinlan plays Deborah, a teenager with schizophrenia admitted by her parents in the 1950s. Giving an exhausting, visceral wallop of a performance, Quinlan registers with total conviction how the task of overcoming a mental affliction exacts a toll on the body. Struggling to survive the hallucinations keeping her mind locked away, she is all sweaty nervousness and intermittent exhilaration.

The film boasts terrific visuals: during one therapy session a huge iron gate slams down between Deborah and her therapist Dr. Fried (Bibi Andersson), a startling manifestation of Sylvia Plath's "bell jar." Deborah harbors a fantasy world called Yr, inhabited by a primitive tribe—a cross between Quest For Fire's cavemen and Hair's hippies. When hallucinations about Yr appear to lure Deborah, literally chasing her down hallways, the effect is not silly, but surprisingly frightening and intriguing; aided by the low-budget restraints of Roger Corman, the tribe appears neither schlocky nor too elaborate. Their incantations and rituals allow Deborah's sexual and emotional frustrations free reign; the seductive allure and refuge of madness, sensual and numbing, is palpable.

In a key line, Dr. Fried encourages Deborah to challenge the rule of Yr by telling her: "I think your god is a cruel god." A profound statement for any mind abusing itself in the name of a trauma from which it suspects it cannot recover, it serves as a turning point for Deborah, transforming her feelings trapped and unleashed by Yr into this-worldly emotion, and breaking its spell. The finale, when Deborah cuts her arm, astonished she can finally feel realistic pain, and then excitedly runs around trying to convey the import of what has happened to anyone she can find, is an unexpected, tear-jerking end to a vicious ordeal.

In Ordinary People, Timothy Hutton is miraculous as teenager Conrad Jarrett, reintegrating into home and school life after being hospitalized for a suicide attempt. His family is recovering from the loss of eldest son Buck, who drowned when he and Conrad got caught in a storm while boating. Conrad encounters healing not in cool, clinical examination, but "sanity as vibrancy" in the form of an idiosyncratic, brusque, yet extraordinarily caring psychiatrist named Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch).

The exact root of the configuration of guilt, fear, and sadness plaguing Conrad remains mysterious. With uncommon realism and a deft, graceful tone (Pachabel's Canon in D is used perfectly) the story begins to assemble its underlying basis, especially as revealed in conversations between Conrad and Berger. Director Robert Redford layers suspense around Conrad's impending self-understanding as a thriller moves toward a killer. The climactic resolution matches the excitement of nabbing any suspect: a breathtaking moment of realization suddenly arrives, summarized by a psychological formula encapsulated in a few words. Dr. Berger challenges Conrad's shame surrounding the incident that killed his brother but left him alive (and behind): "What was the one thing you did wrong?" he asks. Conrad answers: "I held on. I held onto the boat." It's as good a maxim for a person seeking to restore identity through self-forgiveness as you are likely to find. Conrad's relief and wonder is a moving blueprint, writ large, for how self-forgiveness may fit in the structure of a person psychologically "stuck" life.

Three Elements of American Sanity: Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting (1997) uses three basic elements emerging as a pattern for the modern American struggle to overcome mental illness. It consists of a trio of reoccurring elements: a young person awakening from psychological numbness; a therapist who uses a combination of compassion, honesty, and idiosyncratic directness to penetrate the patient's emotional shield; and a critical moment telegraphing how a mind crosses the threshold separating stagnation from movement, illness from health. Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is a genius of rare capability who refuses to use his gifts, rendered immobile by an abusive childhood. Enter Sean McGuire (Robin Williams), a talented therapist heartbroken by his wife's death and also hiding from his potential. Wielding "sanity is not the opposite of vibrancy" through humor and risky confrontation, Sean coaxes Will to test the waters beyond trauma by showing him a sorrowful portrait of another man hemmed in, only twenty years down the line: namely, himself.

Again, we witness a climatic exchange between therapist and patient, father-figure and protégé, showcasing another maxim of self-forgiveness. After verbally sparring for months in therapy, Sean one day spontaneously embraces Will and, regarding the abuse still haunting him, repeats: "It isn't your fault." A dramatic and moving demonstration of the power of transference, the statement is both active reassurance and a verbal rite of passage for Will; a symbolic gesture paralleling the parental relationship—one that, if he can accept, will replace the grip of abuse by substituting it with caring.

One Step (or Two) Away From Reality: Cassavetes, Coming Apart, and a Joanne Woodward Double Feature

Both The Three Faces of Eve (1957) and Sybil (1976) tackle multiple personality disorder, and star Joanne Woodward. In the former, Woodward plays a modest and humble Midwest housewife whose husband discovers that she is exhibiting two additional personalities. Based on an actual case study, with some of the dialogue taken from notes and conversations, the film is a groundbreaker in terms of empathetically presenting severe mental illness to the public. Multiple personality disorder is a condition in which a person's core personality develops several "satellite" personalities, co-existing as separate entities within the single psyche. Usually, it is due to withering abuse early in life; in order to protect the core personality, who cannot bear the pain of the abuse, the mind creates other personalities who function in order to assume its psychological burden and disassociate from trauma.

In Sybil, Woodward is the psychiatrist treating a woman with sixteen satellite personalities (Sally Field). This TV film became a cultural touchstone, leading to official recognition of "MPD" by the psychiatric community. Case numbers rose, and controversy ensued: a heated debate in the mental health field as to the validity, etiology, and specificity of the disorder, along with questions about what role suggestion played in diagnosis. Confusion caused lay people to ascribe a multitude of conditions to MPD, sometimes inappropriately. The illness was eventually changed to dissociative identity disorder for clarity.

John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence (1974) shows us a working class mother and wife enduring a slow, agonizing breakdown. Cassavetes' aesthetic—loose, meandering, and rhythmically close to the awkwardness of real life—when combined with the story of a mind's disintegration from coherence to chaos, has a shattering effect. Gena Rowlands conveys the terrified confusion of a person unable to organize reality, and worse, unable to communicate to loved ones what is happening to her. Devolving into nonsensical, inscrutable thoughts, Rowlands expertly portrays a woman trying helplessly to describe an existential nightmare through a harrowing series of facial tics, unfinished gestures, abrupt sounds and tortured body language—as if despair is caught in her body like a wild animal she tries in vain to expel.

Coming Apart (1969) features Rip Torn as psychiatrist Joe Glassman, a womanizer of glowering macho sadism and imploding intelligence, whose private and professional lives are deteriorating. In an experiment that's part voyeurism, part self-examination, and part perverse heightening of self-conscious absorption, he opts to capture himself falling to pieces via a camera in his apartment (presaging today's "reality TV"). However, the lens only serves to heighten Joe's feeling of dissociation, rather than provide escape from it. In the end, shipwrecked, he smashes the mirror reflecting the room into the camera; a violent, symbolic removal of his own image that seems both queasily suicidal and a hail-mary attempt to face problems in real life, not via artifice; a disputation of media's "extra eye" as potential healer.

The Rest of the Pack

David and Lisa (1962), a sensitive tale of two teenagers falling in love in an institution; Lars and the Real Girl (2007), with Ryan Gosling working out issues with a lifelike sex doll; The Bridge (2005), a documentary about people who attempt suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge; Save the Tiger (1973), about a clothing manufacturer (Jack Lemmon) succumbing to generational alienation and ethical stress (lookout for his eerie speech to spectral audience); Billy the Kid (2007), about a small town boy with acute social difficulties romancing a blind girl; Grey Gardens (1977), an investigation into the eccentric Beale sisters, former socialites living in a dilapidated mansion; Robert Duvall as the father of The Stone Boy (1984), whose reacts to tragedy by ceasing to speak; Geoffrey Rush as a classical pianist who overcame illness to perform in Shine (1996); Frances (1982) with Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer, a movie star committed in the '40s for manic-depression; Winona Ryder befriends Angelina Jolie in a hospital in Girl, Interrupted (1999); Christina Ricci tries out a new drug in the annoying Prozac Nation (2001); Kevin Spacey may or may not be an alien from another planet in K-PAX (2001); Drew Barrymore battles depression in Mad Love (1995); Johnny Depp takes care of his schizophrenic sister in Benny and Joon (1993); "What is ‘the wall'?" a favorite teenage discussion starter explored visually by Alan Parker in Pink Floyd: The Wall (1981); Kathleen Turner's daughter develops autism in House of Cards (1992); King George III suffers genetic disease in the dark dramedy The Madness of King George (1994); Crazy Love (2007), the true story of a tumultuous tabloid relationship in 1950s New York; Jupiter's Wife (1994), a real-life look at delusion and homelessness.

Part III, "Horrors: When the Mind Goes Very, Very Wrong," can be found here.

Posted by ahillis at September 2, 2009 10:52 AM