frankwiener

Although I am no expert on mental illness, I have known people who were mentally disturbed enough to take their own lives because of the extent of the mental anguish that they were experiencing. I have also read of even more people who were so mentally ill that they actually took the lives of others or completely ruined the lives of others in a variety of ways. Although no expert, I think that there is a difference between being seriously ill and just being zany, goofy or misunderstood--even completely ostracized--by the people around us. In the case of comedy as an art form, I still have trouble when actual mental illness is presented as being "funny". It's not that the subject is "off limits" to the world of comedy. It's just that I haven't resolved comedy and actual mental illness in my own mind because of the profound tragedy that I have observed among those who suffer from a true disease of the mind.

That having been said, something happens in this film that, in my view, throws it off course from its original path, which I think was supposed to be an exploration of bipolar disorder. Along the way, we get so distracted by the fan-aticism for the Philadelphia Eagles and a dance contest that I, for one, lost complete sight of the central character's initial situation. I'm surprised that the psychiatrist didn't turn up as one of the dance contestants. Or why not the police officer assigned to Pat's case? How about the waitress who brought the raisin bran at the diner? That would have worked. The high school principal?

Part of my problem in appreciating the film is my dislike for most of the characters with the exception of Dolores Solitano, the mother, played by Jacki Weaver, and Danny, played by Chris Tucker. Unfortunately, neither character appeared long enough to save the film for me. I was sure that Danny had maneuvered his way out of the mental hospital a third time, but I was wrong. I think that I appreciated these two because I became so exhausted from all of the others. After "Awakenings", I can only see Robert DeNiro as a variation of Leonard Lowe. Maybe I just haven't seen enough of DeNiro's films to appreciate the range of his acting, which unfortunately seems very limited to me.

As a disclaimer, I have written two novels, and, not to boast, but I enjoy the characters in my own books much more than the main characters of this film. Maybe I need to live in Philadelphia in order to like and understand them more, but I'm not sure.

But nothing can top the scene of Derek Vineyard (Edward Norton) in the prison shower, as far as the literal meaning of the "f" word is concerned, eh? After observing that, I am very pleased to have avoided the prison experience so far, which was no minor accomplishment in my case.

I actually liked this film until the ending, and there is no necessity to spoil it, but I found it excessively violent so far beyond proportion to the point that it ironically justified Derek's original, hateful view of the world, which confused me unless that was the film's intention. No wonder there was an alternative ending, which wasn't used in the version that I viewed. Maybe it should have been used after all. I'm not sure if the ending was the primary reason why director Tony Kaye wanted to distance himself from the final production. That is unclear to me.

I liked the use of black and white to emphasize Derek's original view of the world. As a Jew, I didn't appreciate Elliot Gould's character as a liberal Jewish educator as I found it to be annoyingly stereotypical. Contrary to widely accepted public opinion, we're not all one-dimensional, knee-jerk liberals who act as we are expected to act and who react to events in predictable, stereotypical ways. That is very offensive to me.

I was very happy to see Beverly D'Angelo in a role that was not Ellen Griswold of the "Vacation" series because I knew that she is capable of much more than that when I saw her as Patsy Cline in "Coal Miner's Daughter". Yes, I'm a fan of both Patsy and Beverly.