MHA's Blog: Chiming In

Sometimes, smaller movies are the best avenues to discuss mental health on film. There are numerous ways to interpret an illness, and by taking a smaller, more daring approach to the material, filmmakers can say more about what it means to deal with a mental illness than if they tried to appease the masses. Keane takes that approach, and it makes for an interesting movie, if not a clear story. By putting the scenes of the movie out of order, he makes a statement about what perception means and how movies can express it.

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It’s a cliché that actors win Oscars when they play people with mental illnesses. The history proves it true, though. At my last count, 16 Oscars went to actors playing people with mental health or substance use conditions. The way they handle the topic varies with the time period, but overall, the roles are not positive. One of the most recent offenders is this week’s movie, A Beautiful Mind.

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I want to give Harvey star Jimmy Stewart a hug (not actually, though then I could cross “hug a zombie” off of my bucket list). I watched Harvey this week after accepting that Safe wasn’t going to happen, and he is the best. My DVD had an interview with him as an introduction to the movie, and his insights into how people deal with his character, Elwood P. Dowd, and his imaginary friend Harvey, were delightful. Between this and It’s a Wonderful Life, his contributions to reducing the stigma around mental health conditions should get him a prize (on top of the Oscar nomination he got for both roles). On top of that, Harvey is a wonderful movie.

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I know I was supposed to review Safe, the Todd Haynes-Julianne Moore movie about hypochondria and allergies, but due to a number of unforeseen circumstances (mostly of my own making), I wasn’t able to get a copy of it. Instead, I did what I always do when things aren’t going my way; I went to the movies. At the suggestion of a colleague, I saw Iron Man 3. It turned out to be a great movie on a lot of levels, especially in its discussion of mental health.

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The Three Faces of Eve, made in 1958, is one of the earliest films to deal with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).  Despite being tied to its time, the movie handles the illness with intelligence and sympathy.  In a time when movies were censored for content, how did this movie get made?

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