Depressed teenager thinks about killing himself, pleads for help at the hospital, gets admitted, spends a 5 days in the adult psyche ward, learns about love, life, confidence, self-efficacy, honesty and himself. Despite my lukewarm love affair with Zack Galifianakis, ever since he admitted to pissing on Tony Danza’s star, I still was not sure if I was going to enjoy this movie. In fact I was certain that I was either going to find the film to be a witty and insightful look at the under explored topic of white suburban smart kid depression, or it was going to resemble the sensation of sliding down a fifty foot cheese grater nude. Despite the many graphic euphemisms I had at hand to slate this movie, fundamentally it was well written, well directed, with great performances and insightful editing. Honestly, many of the movies I have seen recently were in dire need of a far less inhibited editor with bigger secateurs and deeper vision. In fact, I recommend this movie, even more so than Chumscrubber, a movie that tackles the same issue, more or less, but with more existential obscurity.
Now the problems, well actually just the one, simply because the fact that Emma Roberts with self-inflicted facial scars is insanely hot trumps any petty gripe I may harbor against this film. It has an optimistic tone, as though life gets better. It tells the audience that when you know who you want to be, how you want to live, and have someone to love, life gets better. The unfortunate truth is that things don’t work like that. As a person who suffers from the dreaded depression, the great suburban disease of the mind, being depressed is easy, its believing you can be happy that is hardest of all. When the weight of the world ties you beneath your sheets and the beckoning hand of Morpheus draws you away from the bitter light and inevitable failure, the comfort comes in the totality of that feeling. The hatred of self becomes the safest place to reside as it justifies all the suffering you believe you’ve cause yourself and those around you. It becomes a poisonous and paralyzing Catch 22 in which you see yourself as the cause of all your suffering, which prevents you from acting which causes you suffering and in turn you become the reason for the troubles in your life. The movie was accurate in showing how space away from one’s routine and relations can provide a therapeutic change is perspective. Getting distance from one’s own line of sight can do wonders for those who dare to look at life differently. Often we are simply too invested in the fear that paralysis us to consider an alternative.
Now let’s say you have gained this new perspective, you have decided to live mindfully and engage a self that you believe will bring you greater joy, happiness and fulfillment. This journey is far more difficult, and at times painful, than the catatonic numbness that came before it. This may come across as defeatist, but it is not. In the end of the movie, it portrays the insight and joys as a lightness that shifts his perception of his future. It can very much be like that. The moments of light that claw themselves through the overgrowth can burn the away the shadows with the type of glory you could not have conceived of in your deepest realm of escapism. No hardship of the heart compares to those moments, and if his new love’s self-harming behavior is the result of Borderline Personality Disorder, then he is in for quite a few hardships. I know from experience. Even if the world lays a path of gold before you, when your hands have been scared by your own inaction, they struggle to grasp the slightest of joys. I must go now; a flicker of light seems to be in front of me. If I do not reach out to it now I may lose this chance as well.
