BY NATALIE ROMAN

In 1967, reality got too dense and complicated for Susanna Kaysen. At the age of 18, she was committed to McLean Hospital after a twenty minute therapy session with a doctor she'd never seen before. She thought she wouldn't be there for long, because she didn't feel she was "crazy enough." Ultimately, she was in residence for nearly two years. Girl, Interrupted is Kaysen's astute memoir of her time at McLean.

Girl, Interrupted is a rich and provocative read. Kaysen describes the nature of the mind and reality in an astoundingly adept way. These essays perfectly capture the sense of a life postponed that comes with living in a mental health facility, especially at such a young age. Kaysen describes how easily life can slip away when one is stripped of responsibilities and accountability. Yet Kaysen's memoir does more than paint a human picture of life in the hospital; it raises profound questions about the definition of sanity. Kaysen astutely questions what it means to be sane, what it means to have a mental illness, and how we perceive reality. These questions are all too important, especially in an age such as ours, when science is trying to explain away emotion, curing ailments with pills. Readers of Girl, Interrupted finish the book with a new understanding of our accepted reality and what it actually means to be "crazy."

However, Girl, Interrupted is probably more widely known as a movie than as a book of short essays. Girl, Interrupted is a fine film. Directed by James Mangold, the film has a rich cast of extremely compelling young actresses. Winona Ryder, as Susanna Kaysen, captures the essence of what it is to be young and troubled. Angelina Jolie, in an Academy Award winning role as Lisa, is dangerously charismatic, evoking both anger and empathy from audiences. Fine performances are also given by a cast of supporting actresses, notably Brittany Murphy as Daisy, a troubled woman obsessed with laxatives and chicken, and Angela Bettis as Janet, an angry and sarcastic anoretic. The characters are all well-developed, capturing the attention of audiences everywhere. The plot is a good one, mixing enough action and emotion to keep viewers interested and connected to Susanna's plight. If evaluated strictly as a film and not an adaptation of a novel, Girl, Interrupted is satisfying and enjoyable.

However, reading Kaysen's memoir, with its adroit prose, can leave one feeling dissatisfied with the film. As an adaptation, Girl, Interrupted falls slightly short. Kaysen's meaningful insights take the form of spotty and inconsistent voice-over narratives done by Ryder, mere vestiges of the novel. While this narrative seeks to capture the insight of Kaysen's prose, it merely comes off as cheesy and slightly trite. Gone, also, are all the meaningful questions about the nature of sanity and reality that Kaysen explores. Kaysen challenges her ultimate diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. She feels that her diagnosis was influenced by the turbulent era in which she lived, her age, and gender bias present in society and the world of psychology. In the era of the Vietnam conflict, with daily images of death broadcasted on the news, reality was shaky and scary for many. It was easy for the well-to-do of the sixties to fear youth-- the peace activists, hippies, and other counter-culturists. In such an era, it was easy for a woman such as Kaysen, the first in the history of her high school to not go to college, to be labeled a "contrarian." Kaysen devotes two chapters in her memoir to discussing her diagnosis as a borderline personality. She ultimately comes to the conclusion, as her post-McLean psychiatrist states, that borderline personality disorder is "'...what they call people whose lifestyles bother them.'" Kaysen never really identifies as being borderline. This is a very important point of the book, questioning the criteria for "crazy."

Almost any sense of this is lost in the film. The Susanna Kaysen of the film seems to completely identify with being a borderline personality. There are also small and very subtle commentaries on the state of women in the 1960's that could be seen as a nod to Kaysen's questioning of her diagnosis. There is the "conundrum" faced by Mrs. Guilcrest's daughter who must choose between Radcliffe and Wellesley (Mrs. Guilcrest is a Wellesley girl and the daughter eventually becomes one, too). There is the conversation Susanna has with her guidance counselor about not going to college, where Susanna challenges the assertion of the counselor that women have more choices today than they used to. There is also the conversation Susanna has with Dr. Wick, the head psychiatrist at McLean, about the meaning of "promiscuity." However, these small moments are lost within the film, as audiences are drawn into Susanna's challenge of whether or not she will "indulge" in her craziness. Ultimately, the film seems to lose sight of Kaysen's original intent of her memoir: to challenge the accepted view of craziness. The film Girl, Interrupted merely reinforces the idea that there is a solid line between sane and crazy and that therapy and psychiatry are the objective, non-biased roads back to mental health.

All in all, while Girl, Interrupted the film is highly enjoyable, it falls short as an adaptation. It is not entirely the fault of the film, however. It is extremely difficult to capture on film the level of clarity, insight, and self-awareness that make Girl, Interrupted the novel as compelling as it is. On film, a director has only two hours to get his message across. The most effective way to do so is through a well-developed plot full of movement. It is a shame that movies do not afford the leisure that reading does-- the leisure of lingering over words, meanings, insights, and evocations. The film is great if one wants to get drawn into the plight and plot of mental illness. However, if one wants to linger leisurely in the realm of questions and insights, then the novel is a clear choice. Both are equally satisfying works in their own right.