Everything's Fine Now
Having been through the turmoil and shocks myself, I can say with authority that John Cassavetes' 1974 film depicting mental illness and its effects on the family of the afflicted one is accurate to the point that in some scenes I felt sick watching it.
A Woman Under the Influence can be interpreted variously, depending on the experience-based viewpoints of viewers. Because Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands in the finest depiction of a mentally ill person I've ever seen) drinks alcohol frequently, some health professionals who specialize in substance abuse treatment might conclude her problem is based in alcoholism. Others, like myself, will conclude she's mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia (possibly) or a borderline personality disorder (more likely, but still, given the clues provided in the film, who knows?). Early on she exhibits weird physical behaviors symptomatic of anti-psychotic drug use; neuroleptic medication designed to halt the psychotic slide into total madness.
Has she gone crazy before the film's start? Whether or not she's on medications that simply aren't mentioned in the film, her hand-wringing, her distorted facial expressions, her lip-buzzing, all point to a real mental illness self-treated with alcohol.
Married to Nick (Peter Falk in a superb performance), there's a daily and nightly effort to make it seem as if things are normal. They have two young sons and a young daughter, a house in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Palm trees and the other usual semi-tropical southern California vegetation surround this story just as they have in countless other made in Hollywood films, but how many such films have dug deeply into the tensions of a marriage pressured by the challenges of mental illness, a condition even now barely understood or tolerated by society at large?
When I write that the film made me feel sick, I don't mean physically sick, although I felt a hollow sense in my stomach. When Nick has a family doctor come over to witness Mabel's intensification of her behaviors and instability for the purposes of commitment to a psychiatric ward, Mabel becomes increasingly agitated, the presence of Nick's caustic and verbally abusive mother not helping. They're not letting Mabel near the children, which adds to the emotional upset, the doctor tries to inject her with a sedative; every move they make is met with strong resistance that manifests increased wild behaviors and irrationality. This "influence" of factors external to the psychotic, as in the film's title, is an undercurrent perhaps not apparent to viewers who have never gone nuts and have had to deal with authorities and family members during that process.
I propose, based on my own experience of manic depressive illness and time spent in psychiatric wards, that the word "influence" doesn't mean the prod of alcoholism, but rather the reactions of society (of family and the medical community, of cops) toward the mentally ill. When even well-meaning people approach a psychotic person, interpretations sparkle inside the psychotic person's mind. What are you doing to me? Why do you want to give me that shot? I just want to go into my room and be alone, why are you preventing me from doing that? Where are you taking me? When can I leave? Why can't I leave?
Hell could consist of physical torment, but mental torment of the sort mentioned above is comparably horrendous.
Peter Falk's Nick maintains an admirable degree of fortitude during the film, yet his anger comes out, without helping the situation, as he deals with the crisis in an emotionally closed off way, snapping at his coworkers who talk about Mabel's commitment to an institution, an incarceration lasting six months and including shock therapy.
When she gets out, Nick and the extended family have a gathering for her. Everyone tries to pretend that things have returned to normal. "The past is the past." When Mabel tells a few stories of being in the ward, everyone at the dinner table reacts as if a dead animal just fell from the ceiling. She's reminded not to "get too excited."
How many times did I hear that after I got out of the psychiatric ward in 1993? This attempt by family members at normalcy is a real thing that I felt myself. At the time I remember feeling very frustrated with it, because it short-circuited communication, something I badly needed to help me understand what the fuck had happened to me. Nick and the other family members in the film don't understand, can't find words to communicate about Mabel's problems; the fact that she just spent six months in the same building, looking at the same ugly walls, ceilings, carpets, crappy furniture, the same glaring lights, surrounded by other mentally fucked up people, all of whom, like her, were also on various types of drugs issued by the medical staff, some of whom were cruel or callous, and some even borderline personalities themselves, as in the psychiatric wards I lived in during three occasions in 1993, 1994, and 2002.
In my own case, I only very rarely get asked about my times in those places, or even more rarely about what it's like to live with a mental illness. Even though medicated and stable (normal), it's still a struggle, and I'm sure that Mabel after the end of the film has to continue with the war inside herself for the rest of her life. The influence of "people trying to help," people who also don't know what the fuck they're doing, is harshly balanced by a mental illness that is never mentioned (because it's an uncomfortable subject, though it may not be so for the mentally ill person). That void of not hearing from loved ones questions and wonderment about the throes of being crazy and recovery from that also constitutes an influence of absence, one that in itself amounts to a form of mental unbalance in society itself, with its "normal" people pretending they do good by letting the past be past, while the mentally ill live quietly inside their minds where suffering is unnoticed by others, even by loved ones.
If this seems a harsh judgment of polite society and normal conversational discourse, suck it up, motherfuckers.
A Woman Under the Influence is a masterpiece, with great images, the camera in close to the faces, the characters first and foremost as center to the action; yet, the realism of 1973 and 1974 southern California, the traffic, even a sequence when it's raining, actually raining in a film made in Hollywood (the location of the Longhetti's house is a real home in Hollywood), Nick's worksites, his working class colleagues, their construction equipment, the dirt, the telephones, Mabel's short skirts, all show a past ambience that at the time just looked contemporary, but now looks "vintage." What isn't vintage is the genuine power of the film's theme of madness in a domestic setting in working class America, something prevalent right now, except that there aren't any filmmakers these days with the psychological and dramatic intensity of John Cassavetes.
Vic Neptune
Having been through the turmoil and shocks myself, I can say with authority that John Cassavetes' 1974 film depicting mental illness and its effects on the family of the afflicted one is accurate to the point that in some scenes I felt sick watching it.
A Woman Under the Influence can be interpreted variously, depending on the experience-based viewpoints of viewers. Because Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands in the finest depiction of a mentally ill person I've ever seen) drinks alcohol frequently, some health professionals who specialize in substance abuse treatment might conclude her problem is based in alcoholism. Others, like myself, will conclude she's mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia (possibly) or a borderline personality disorder (more likely, but still, given the clues provided in the film, who knows?). Early on she exhibits weird physical behaviors symptomatic of anti-psychotic drug use; neuroleptic medication designed to halt the psychotic slide into total madness.
Has she gone crazy before the film's start? Whether or not she's on medications that simply aren't mentioned in the film, her hand-wringing, her distorted facial expressions, her lip-buzzing, all point to a real mental illness self-treated with alcohol.
Married to Nick (Peter Falk in a superb performance), there's a daily and nightly effort to make it seem as if things are normal. They have two young sons and a young daughter, a house in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Palm trees and the other usual semi-tropical southern California vegetation surround this story just as they have in countless other made in Hollywood films, but how many such films have dug deeply into the tensions of a marriage pressured by the challenges of mental illness, a condition even now barely understood or tolerated by society at large?
When I write that the film made me feel sick, I don't mean physically sick, although I felt a hollow sense in my stomach. When Nick has a family doctor come over to witness Mabel's intensification of her behaviors and instability for the purposes of commitment to a psychiatric ward, Mabel becomes increasingly agitated, the presence of Nick's caustic and verbally abusive mother not helping. They're not letting Mabel near the children, which adds to the emotional upset, the doctor tries to inject her with a sedative; every move they make is met with strong resistance that manifests increased wild behaviors and irrationality. This "influence" of factors external to the psychotic, as in the film's title, is an undercurrent perhaps not apparent to viewers who have never gone nuts and have had to deal with authorities and family members during that process.
I propose, based on my own experience of manic depressive illness and time spent in psychiatric wards, that the word "influence" doesn't mean the prod of alcoholism, but rather the reactions of society (of family and the medical community, of cops) toward the mentally ill. When even well-meaning people approach a psychotic person, interpretations sparkle inside the psychotic person's mind. What are you doing to me? Why do you want to give me that shot? I just want to go into my room and be alone, why are you preventing me from doing that? Where are you taking me? When can I leave? Why can't I leave?
Hell could consist of physical torment, but mental torment of the sort mentioned above is comparably horrendous.
Peter Falk's Nick maintains an admirable degree of fortitude during the film, yet his anger comes out, without helping the situation, as he deals with the crisis in an emotionally closed off way, snapping at his coworkers who talk about Mabel's commitment to an institution, an incarceration lasting six months and including shock therapy.
When she gets out, Nick and the extended family have a gathering for her. Everyone tries to pretend that things have returned to normal. "The past is the past." When Mabel tells a few stories of being in the ward, everyone at the dinner table reacts as if a dead animal just fell from the ceiling. She's reminded not to "get too excited."
How many times did I hear that after I got out of the psychiatric ward in 1993? This attempt by family members at normalcy is a real thing that I felt myself. At the time I remember feeling very frustrated with it, because it short-circuited communication, something I badly needed to help me understand what the fuck had happened to me. Nick and the other family members in the film don't understand, can't find words to communicate about Mabel's problems; the fact that she just spent six months in the same building, looking at the same ugly walls, ceilings, carpets, crappy furniture, the same glaring lights, surrounded by other mentally fucked up people, all of whom, like her, were also on various types of drugs issued by the medical staff, some of whom were cruel or callous, and some even borderline personalities themselves, as in the psychiatric wards I lived in during three occasions in 1993, 1994, and 2002.
In my own case, I only very rarely get asked about my times in those places, or even more rarely about what it's like to live with a mental illness. Even though medicated and stable (normal), it's still a struggle, and I'm sure that Mabel after the end of the film has to continue with the war inside herself for the rest of her life. The influence of "people trying to help," people who also don't know what the fuck they're doing, is harshly balanced by a mental illness that is never mentioned (because it's an uncomfortable subject, though it may not be so for the mentally ill person). That void of not hearing from loved ones questions and wonderment about the throes of being crazy and recovery from that also constitutes an influence of absence, one that in itself amounts to a form of mental unbalance in society itself, with its "normal" people pretending they do good by letting the past be past, while the mentally ill live quietly inside their minds where suffering is unnoticed by others, even by loved ones.
If this seems a harsh judgment of polite society and normal conversational discourse, suck it up, motherfuckers.
A Woman Under the Influence is a masterpiece, with great images, the camera in close to the faces, the characters first and foremost as center to the action; yet, the realism of 1973 and 1974 southern California, the traffic, even a sequence when it's raining, actually raining in a film made in Hollywood (the location of the Longhetti's house is a real home in Hollywood), Nick's worksites, his working class colleagues, their construction equipment, the dirt, the telephones, Mabel's short skirts, all show a past ambience that at the time just looked contemporary, but now looks "vintage." What isn't vintage is the genuine power of the film's theme of madness in a domestic setting in working class America, something prevalent right now, except that there aren't any filmmakers these days with the psychological and dramatic intensity of John Cassavetes.
Vic Neptune
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