A Masterpiece!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This film is unforgettable for many reasons, but mostly for Jolie's masterful portrayal of a psychopath. She is utterly mesmerising in this movie and she steals every scene she is in. The ensemble cast is also great, with brilliant turns from a young Elisabeth Moss and Brittany Murphy. Winona Ryder is captivating as always and carries this beautiful film through to the end.

Most of us heard of the movie "A Beautiful Mind". In my opinion, Girl, Interrupted is almost as good as that movie in terms of the performances and the story. Both movies are biographies of people who suffer from psychological diseases. The characters in the movie were pretty realistic, giving us the chance to observe the lives and behaviors of that kind of people and understand them. I found the movie pretty underrated.

James Mangold's "Girl, Interrupted" is the best film that I have seen about disabled people since "Rain Man" (1988) but the key difference between those two films is that this movie is based on true events. The movie stars Winona Ryder as Susanna Kaysen who wrote the book that this movie was adapted from and it talks about her time and experience in a mental hospital in the 1960's but at first it isn't that easy for her to make many friends. During her first few days the only person she really trusts is the supervising nurse named Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg) whose job is very difficult and Goldberg's character is the polar opposite of Nurse Ratched who was played by Louise Fletcher in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975). As her time in the hospital progresses Susanna meets a girl named Georgina (Clea Duvall), and then meets a girl who everyone really gets annoyed with and despises at times is a girl named Lisa (Angelina Jolie) who has a really bad attitude. Then in one scene we see Kaysen's boyfriend named Tobias Jacobs (Jared Leto) who is trying to sneak Susanna out of the hospital but Susanna refuses. Other friends that Susanna happens to make are girls named Daisy (Brittany Murphy), Polly (Elisabeth Moss) and others. The reason why Susanna Kaysen was sent to the hospital in the first place was because she was very suicidal which she was sent there by a psychiatrist named Dr. Potts (Jeffrey Tambor). The other doctor in the mental hospital has a very weird last name and her name is Dr. Wick (Vanessa Redgrave), the movie has an excellent cast and great performances throughout which are so good because it really makes you empathize with each and every one of the characters and we feel like we are actually there getting to know them. As the great Roger Ebert once said that "For me the movies are a machine that generates empathy, it helps to understand hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us." and that is exactly how I felt with this and many other movies. Despite this movie being one of the best films of 1999 it isn't the very best movie that James Mangold ever directed (that would be "Walk the Line" (2005) which also happened to be a biopic). James Mangold has done a very good by making this movie just focus on the characters and their feelings instead of just shedding a bad light on them as people even though we know their problems are bad just like Barry Levinson did with "Rain Man" 11 years before this movie was made. This was a truly great movie but as a warning it might only be worth watching once.

I was amazed with this movie when it was released. Two decades later I run into it and decided to watch it again. I must admit I have no idea why was I so thrilled back when I was 20. It is undeniably good, but it does not break into "required reading". Cast is excellent. Angelina Jolie inviolably dominate the movie and, although she is in supporting role, I think this was the role of her life. She deservedly took Academy Award and dozen more first places on various film festivals. Winona is Winona, I was never able to form a coherent opinion about her. There are also Jared Leto, Whoopi Goldberg, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Vanessa Redgrave... surely this movie is worth watching, if if for no other reason than for really good acting.