R, 1 hr. 39 min. Directed by: Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Release Date: March 19, 2005. DVD Release Date: July 5, 2005.
I vaguely remember when the book that was the inspiration for this movie was released. By vague, I mean I don't remember any of the details, but I remember being sort of aware of the book's prominence in my local Barnes & Noble. I certainly remember the whole baby eating urban legend about prozac, which seems to have followed in the wake of the book release, but I'm not sure why. When I saw the trailer for the film a few weeks ago, there wasn't anything I didn't immediately like: Christina Ricci, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Jason Biggs, and Jessica Lange. Christina Ricci is... bipolar, maybe? Something other than "depressed" is a certainty, because I'm pretty familiar with the workings of clinical depression and that wasn't it. Well, some of her behavior was classical depression, but some of it was, well, I'm thinking "lunacy" is the right word.
Initially, I was fascinated by the development of Lizzie's (Christina Ricci) character and the portrayal of her life, because in many ways we have had a very similar experience. My parents divorced when I was two, and my father largely disappeared. Like Lizzie's father, he tried to return at a later date as if nothing had ever happened, the only difference was more than 18 years passed for me and Lizzie's father vanished for four. My mother compensated by over-involving herself in my life, resulting in a battle of will, rage, injured feelings, and guilt that I see when I deal with my mother to this day. I even enjoy writing, although I don't think I have Lizzie's talent for it.
From there, the gild falls off the lily pretty quickly though. I love Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's work, and unfortunately he spends all of fifteen minutes on camera taking a back seat so Jason Biggs and Michelle Williams can have larger parts. Rhys-Meyers could have used extra lines to help him practice his American accent, which is nearly as abysmal as Kevin Costner's British one. Christina Ricci shows, as I think she almost always has once she moved past her "Wednesday Addams" roles, depth and promise. I keep hoping she'll find either a way or an interest in going mainstream so I can see her on the big screen more frequently. Jessica Lange spends most of her time mimicking her role in Hush, adding only a thin layer of sanity to the mix.
Conflict is key to a good story. The problem here is that every ounce of conflict is driven by Lizzie's illness and most of it feels eye-rollingly contrived, even though I'm sure it's all real, or to be more precise, all real to Lizzie. Perception can be a terrible thing, but from an outside view, there isn't any real conflict in the film, it's layers upon layers of Lizzie's misinterpretations and exaggerations of the words and behaviors of her friends and family. I saw one critic write something to the effect that it shouldn't surprise anyone that a movie about depression was depressing... I have to agree with the statement, although I think it sums up the American feeling about mental illness. There's a certain flippant disregard for people who suffer through these diseases. I suffer from dysthymia myself, a form of depression that is less severe than most, but can last for years without a break in the "low" period, and even I struggled not to discount Lizzie entirely because of her illness. I won't write down everything I thought, but "crazy" featured prominently, as did "bunny boiler," for those of you familiar with that old chestnut.
If a conflict external to Lizzie's own mind had been introduced, this may have been to depression what Philadelphia was to AIDS. As it was, I was looking at the timer on my DVD player at about the halfway mark. There's a lot of promise in the film, but I'm guessing the material that inspired it wasn't quite what the film needed to reach the goals it so obviously sought.
