"Manic"

Mental illness and disability is a fairly popular subject for filmmakers and actors alike. The serious and dedicated will seize the opportunity to examine people whom most of us find naturally fascinating due to their ostentatious otherness. From then on, different goals and different outcomes may ensue:  Some may attempt to seek – but not necessarily succeed –an understanding of them as human beings. Others, such as John Cassavetes in his masterpiece “A Woman Under The Influence”, may instead use them as a medium through which to talk about and perhaps better understand themselves. Others still, such as Milos Forman in “One Flew Over A Cuckoo’s Nest”, may use them as an allegory for the oppression of individuality.

Unserious hacks, on the other hand, will simply exploit the topic as bait for critical praise and awards by aggressively tugging at the audience’s heartstrings and starring Magical Mentally Ill People in the lead role, saintly martyrs of society’s cruelty and intolerance who teach other characters the true values of life.

Mercifully, Jordan Melamed’s “Manic” avoids the latter tropes but its self-consciously scrupulous efforts to convey what life is like for these people place it in an uncomfortable position between quality and mediocrity. Melamed’s attempts to reproduce the impression of “real life” through heavy cuts and close shots filmed in long focal lenses using a handheld digital camera come across as self-conscious rather than natural. After a few well-directed scenes of the characters talking or having a breakdown, sentiment creeps back in the form of “liberating” group activity – trashing the main room to a Rage Against The Machine song – whose desired effect of spontaneity is undone by the obviousness of its efforts and dramatic dubiousness. The script offers characters with tremendous potential and an evident desire to look at them as human beings but it only seldom gets to see beyond the two-dimensional tropes they constitute, whether they’re Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s troubled angry youth or Zooey Deschanel’s depressive rape victim.

  

Indeed, most of the success in making those mentally ill teens convincing comes from the actors rather than the screenplay itself. I understand many of them, such as Sara Rivas, were actual patients being treated for depression. Their dialogue, while not always especially original, generally comes across as suitably authentic. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who would later deliver an even more outstanding portrayal of an even more disturbed young man in Gregg Araki’s “Mysterious Skin”, avoids every mistake Melamed makes, never giving the impression of consciously trying to be accurate. He is, as always, a joy to behold and one of the main reasons to recommend this film. His protagonist Lyle Jensen, institutionalized after almost beating a boy to death with a baseball bat, is a potboiler of incandescent rage, not immediately obvious but always lurking within the background of his eyes. Credit must also be given to Cody Lightning for his modest, non-judgmental and sensitive portrayal of Kenny, a remorseful 12 year-old molester of other children and himself the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather. Regretfully, perhaps out of discomfort and uncertainty in how to handle an extremely difficult and taboo subject, his interactions with Lyle are not explored as further as they could and should be.

The most interesting character, surprisingly, is not him however but rather Don Cheadle’s Doctor David Monroe, the psychiatrist in charge of their group therapy. Whenever put in the spotlight, many movie psychiatrists – Judd Hirsch in “Ordinary People” and Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting” come to mind – are drearily predictable, dogged in their often unorthodox attempts to reach out to their troubled patients until they make a break through and give an inspiring speech or two after which we the audience know things will turn out better for them. Doctor Monroe, however, has issues of his own: He’s frustrated, unsure of his own efficiency, often getting the impression of going nowhere with his patients and struggling to keep his own calm. His personal struggle as a recent ex-smoker to resist the temptation to succumb to his old vice does not help.

 

Unfortunately, despite Cheadle’s very commendable performance, the screenplay by Blayne Weaver and Michael Bacall (who also play orderly Charlie and bipolar self-harming patient Chad respectively) makes the same mistake Melamed makes as a director: Trying so hard to avoid cliché it ends up accidentally falling back into it, much like someone stepping in cowpat while diligently avoiding others around them. For example, at one point in the film, while trying to get him to face the fact that the consequences of his father’s physical abuse will likely haunt him forever, Monroe directly tells Lyle that he isn’t going to give him a speech that’ll give him an epiphany and a subsequent breakthrough, yet for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what happens. To be sure, unlike most Hollywood films, Lyle doesn’t get better and learn to let go, but he does end up realizing Monroe is right, in a patently obvious manner. Watch out for particularly heavy-handed symbolism involving Vincent Van Gogh’s last painting, the significance of which – freedom or despair – is the subject of a passionate argument between two patients. While the film’s conclusion – that recognizing that they need help may be the greatest liberation a mentally ill person can get – is valid and refreshing, the road used to travel to it is still paved with clichés.

 As a critic, I generally attach a great amount of importance in authenticity within a film. In this case, my insistence on authenticity stems from a rather personal relationship I have with the subject matter. As a sufferer of Asperger’s syndrome, dyspraxia and severe anxieties, I know what it is like to be trapped in one’s own perception of life and have difficulty breaking out of it. I too have experienced bouts of bottled-in anger that eventually resulted in long-suppressed eruptions, though thankfully never to the point of such violence. While I have never been institutionalized, I have visited mental hospitals and observed mental patients. I do not in any way claim expertise on the topic; it simply speaks to me in a way that is difficult to explain. I dislike seeing films such as “Girl, Interrupted”, “I Am Sam” or “The Eighth Day” portray easily-identifiable trope collections in lieu of genuine people, and treat the life of the mentally ill as a series of dramatic conventions rather than uncomfortably real situations.

To be authentic, a film does not necessarily have to be an accurate reproduction of real life but rely on its creators’ own perception of life and avoid cliché whenever possible, or at the very least try and turn cliché into something bearing one’s own mark. The latter is what “Manic” does not succeed at doing, in spite of all-too noticeable efforts.