While this dramatisation of true events is engaging enough I can't help thinking what a missed opportunity this movie is. There is a story here about mental patients suffering from delusion and being treated by a doctor who says "NO, you are not Jesus". I can't help thinking today the doctor would agree that they are in fact Christ and dress them up in robes and maybe even a crown of thorns. Perhaps a bit of surgery to make their physical form conform to their delusion, how about holes in the palms where the nails past through?
While I wasn't expecting an updated version of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" there was potential to examine mental illness, it's treatment and societies attitudes towards the mentally ill. These themes are touched upon but nothing more than the softest of touches.
Richard Gere and Peter Dinklage put in decent performances but the other two patients were not all that convincing putting in bog standard crazy people acts. The rest of the cast are just there because the script requires someone to say an uninspired line now and again. The direction is flat and the cinematography boring. There is one scene where the Doctor's assistant takes LSD, surely an opportunity for a bit of trippy film making in the style of The Monkeys "Head". Not a bit of it, she talks some giberish about not knowing where her body ends before being taken away by a nurse. When she reappears presumably hours later she is on her way down yet still has nothing insightful to say about her experience. Then she sips some coffee and throws up. Really? Really.......
While I wasn't expecting an updated version of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" there was potential to examine mental illness, it's treatment and societies attitudes towards the mentally ill. These themes are touched upon but nothing more than the softest of touches.
Richard Gere and Peter Dinklage put in decent performances but the other two patients were not all that convincing putting in bog standard crazy people acts. The rest of the cast are just there because the script requires someone to say an uninspired line now and again. The direction is flat and the cinematography boring. There is one scene where the Doctor's assistant takes LSD, surely an opportunity for a bit of trippy film making in the style of The Monkeys "Head". Not a bit of it, she talks some giberish about not knowing where her body ends before being taken away by a nurse. When she reappears presumably hours later she is on her way down yet still has nothing insightful to say about her experience. Then she sips some coffee and throws up. Really? Really.......