Mental Illness in Movies (or Nora’s Crazy Episode)

Movie Meltdown - Episode 449

This week we welcome our friend Nora to lead an over-all history and discussion about the way mental illness is portrayed in the movies. So join us as we hit some key films over the decades as well as some unusual personal favorites on how we look at “crazy people” in the movies.

So as we work toward finding the most healthy way to deal with what we’re messed up about, we also mention… Isle of Dogs, he got a road trip out of it, he wanted to troll your dad but there was no technology to do it yet, it was actually banned by the Army, mechanized version of a person, dissociative identity disorder, let’s get ourselves a robot and get emotionally attached to it, post-suicide recovery, Wes Anderson, forgotten events in their early childhood, healthy coping mechanisms, she's a very predatory therapist, John Huston, tics and movements and speech, nervous conditions, crazy families, it's almost more of a parlor trick than a mental disorder, Doug Jones, touching on what’s going on in mental health and treatment at that time, something that makes a villain a villain, sometimes you have to go to the special shop and you pick out a friend, sexual psychopathy, if you have a therapist like that get a new one ‘cause that guy would lose his license, a cheap plot device, shell shock, the evil sleepwalker, irrational drives that are rooted in your subconscious, accidently everyone’s gorgeous, gettin’ in there… in the brain, there’s a lot of crazy people… and they end up in every movie.

“...so, it’s kind of an interesting view on the brain and what goes on in the inner workings… and what is sane and not and all of that spooky, fun stuff.”