Cinema, as a form of art, is not only able to make the viewers have a good time, be moved, or relate to characters similar to them. It is also a tool able to raise awareness, spread ideas and influence the audience’s beliefs. So, when it comes to sensitive topics, a film might carry a bigger weight, and the creators need to be careful with the messages they spread through their work. Mental health, mental disorders and illnesses have been abused in the film industry for a long time: they have been used as an explanation for a person’s violent, dangerous and destructive behaviors, as many cinema villains have some kind of mental illness.
Also, mental disorders have been stigmatized, and various stereotypes and prejudices have been created and spread through cinema. Another negative aspect is the glamorization and romanticization of mental illness, a harmful perception that does not contribute to their treatment. In this article, four popular movies whose main topic is a mental disorder are briefly analyzed, in order to spot their negative and positive parts in the portrayal of mental illnesses.
Lars and the Real Girl (2007), dir. Craige Gillespie
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider
Lars Lindstrom is a lonely man that lives in a small town in the US, next to his brother’s house, Gus. Lars bears the trauma of his mother’s death, who lost her life while giving birth to him, which caused his father to despise him and be extremely distant from him and his older son. Because of his traumatizing childhood, Lars has avoidance behaviors and haphephobia, the fear of touching someone or being touched.
One day, Lars announces to Gus and his pregnant wife, Karin, that a woman whom he met online has come to visit him. Her name is Bianca and she is a wheelchaired missionary who comes from Brazil. Lars asks Gus and Karin to host Bianca and they accept, excited that Lars has finally met someone and is comfortable with her. Their excitement fades away when Lars introduces Bianca to them, and they realize that she is a lifelike doll.
Their shock was overcome with worry, and they advise Lars, who treats Bianca as an actual human being, to take her to a doctor, dr. Berman, who is also a psychologist, hoping that she will help Lars. Dr. Berman advises everyone in the small town to treat Bianca as a human until Lars decides to let her go. In order to help Lars get better, all his colleagues, friends, and even unknown habitats of the town follow the psychologist’s advice and they behave as if Bianca is a real person, including her in events, local activities and volunteering programs. Slowly, Lars’s love for the doll is reduced, until he “finds out” that Bianca is extremely sick. Dr. Berman explains to everyone that Lars has finally decided to let her go. Bianca “dies” and Lars starts getting closer with his colleague Margo, who has always been interested in him.
According to experts, the film “Lars and the Real Girl” portrays pretty accurately a person with schizoid personality disorder, a condition with its roots in the protagonist’s traumatic childhood. Because of his mother’s death during his labor and his father’s neglect, Lars became an emotionally distant and isolated person, uninterested in creating any emotional bond. He despises being touched or hugged by others and doesn’t show any interest in romantic or sexual relationships.
Lars is deeply affected by Karin’s pregnancy, remembering his mother’s death and also possibly feeling like his brother and his wife will stop caring about him once their baby is born. Lars deals with his anxiety and other emotions through Bianca, the doll that he treats as a human. Bianca is his new way of communicating with others, connecting to his local society and how he expresses his mixed emotions. Once Bianca is “dead”, Lars starts connecting with real people. Although the film might not be totally realistic, as it would be quite rare for a closed community to treat someone with a mental disorder in such a loving, accepting way as Lar’s co-workers and the small-town inhabitants did, it portrays mental illness in a realistic, respectful way, without romanticizing nor condemning it.
Aftersun (2022), dir. Charlotte Wells
Starring Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio
The film focuses on the holidays of 11-year-old Sophie with her father Calum in Turkey during the late 90s. Sophie spends her holidays meeting tourists and hanging out with children of their resort, but also recording everything on her camera. Calum is secretly dealing with anxiety and depression, but is trying to spend some fun time with his daughter despite his mental struggles. The two of them spend their holidays doing various activities, singing and dancing, while Calum is fighting his non-going negative emotions. After spending some emotional father-daughter moments, their common holidays end. In their last scene together, Calum is waving goodbye to Sophie at the airport. Coming to the present, Sophie is now married and has a child with her wife. She watches her recordings from her holidays in Turkey, trying to understand what was going on with Calum.
“Aftersun” is a movie that depicts (intergenerational) depression in a precise, distinctive way, without mentioning the word “depression” even once. Calum is silently battling with depression and anxiety, feelings that he inadvertently has passed on to his daughter. When Sophie mentions that after a long, fun day under the sun, she feels quite down without knowing why, Calum stares into himself in the mirror, with a feeling of guilt obvious in his stare. The film also shows how a person who struggles with depression can be functional and seem happy, while secretly suffering from their condition. Furthermore, director Charlotte Wells chose to show that mental issues are not obvious or easy to detect, they can be tricky and underlying, and that’s why the characters don’t know what’s going on with themselves. In general, “Aftersun” is a prime example of a movie that accurately portrays depression, without cliches or stereotypes.
Girl, Interrupted (1999), dir. James Mangold
Starring Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie
Girl, Interrupted is a psychological drama film, based on the same name biographical book of Susanna Kaysen. The plot follows the 18-year-old Susanna, who overdosed on alcohol and pills after having a mental breakdown. In order to help her, her family puts her into Claymoore Psychiatric Hospital. There, Susanna meets various patients with different mental issues and befriends Daisy, a girl with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Polly, who has schizophrenia, Georgina, a pathological liar and Janet, who suffers from anorexia.
Of all the patients, Susanna is mostly drawn by Lisa, a rebellious and charismatic girl diagnosed as a sociopath. Lisa has been in Claymoore since she was twelve, and even though she has escaped numerous times, she always ends up back in the psychiatric hospital. Susanna is soon diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but her psychiatrist is not informing her about it. Along with her new friends, and Lisa leading the group, Susanna is experiencing a variety of new experiences, various emotions, like despair and fear, but finally manages to overcome her disorder and leave the psychiatric clinic.
The movie “Girl, Interrupted” successfully shows some aspects of various mental illnesses, without using the trope of the “dangerous, evil mentally unstable character” that has been widely portrayed in cinema, but it actually shows how most of the time, people with mental disorders are the victims rather than the villains. The film manages to highlight the deficiency and indifference of the psychiatric care system, especially when it comes to women patients, and how they are mistreated and rarely asked if they feel better with their treatment. They are mostly viewed as a problem, rather than actual human beings with emotions and opinions. Another important point made by the film is that someone doesn’t have to “look crazy”, according to society’s perspective of a mentally unstable person, to need help.
But at the same time, the movie has some serious problems in the portrayal of mental illness. The most prominent example is the main character, Susanna. Even though she is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a serious mental illness with a wide spectrum of symptoms that shouldn’t be overlooked, the film tends to show mostly a few: how promiscuous and flirtatious her disorder makes her, as she is romantically involved with two male characters in the movie. The film doesn’t highlight other aspects of BPD, probably because they wouldn’t make Susanna likable and appealing to the viewers.
Melancholia (2011), dir. Lars von Trier
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgard
The film focuses on two sisters: Justine and Claire. Justine had just got married to Michael in a castle owned by her sister’s husband, when she starts feeling despised for everything and everyone around her. Feeling extreme pressure, she falls back into depression. She quits her job and breaks up with her husband. Meanwhile, Melancholia, a rogue planet whose position was behind the Sun, is moving close to the Earth. Claire is extremely stressed that Melancholia will eventually collide with Earth but John, her husband, calms her down. A series of strange things start happening in the castle, while Melancholia’s root changes and is now coming towards the Earth. Justine, Claire and her son, Leo, are waiting together for the end of the world, which comes when Melancholia falls on Earth and destroys everything.
Lars Von Trier’s main inspiration for “Melancholia” was his own battle with depression, and more specifically a therapy session during which his psychologist told him that depressive people can act better than the rest while being under pressure, as they are always waiting for bad things to occur. Everything in Melancholia, from the storyline and the characters to the soundtrack, is a symbolism of mental illnesses, and more precisely, depression: the upcoming destruction of the Earth, once the planet Melancholia shatters against her, symbolizes how heavily depression affects the life of a person, who is constantly living under the fear of an inevitable, destructive event. It symbolizes how a person’s mind is exaggerating everything to an extreme extent, while under a depressive episode.
The contradictive personalities and the different approaches of the two sisters, Justine and Claire, point out how differently people who suffer from depression can view and experience certain situations. There is only one soundtrack used during the entire film, Act I of Tristan Und Isoldeto by Richard Wagner, a song that is repeated again and again, and symbolizes the recurring feeling of fear that one experiences during a depressive episode. Trier manages to portray depression without an inch of glamorization or stigmatization, through a film about astronomy and the end of our world, without losing his direction and without exploiting mental illnesses.
