Losin' It: Movies on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
It’s not so easy to accurately depict various mental states on screen. Like Boston accents, breakdowns and psychotic episodes can easily come across as over the top because they are often over the top in reality. There’s no standard way to behave for a breakdown. People in the throes of a mental struggle can range from quietly anxious to screaming and everything else in between. Those of us who live in cities have likely witnessed the sad spectacle of someone in need of mental health assistance, and have seen all the varieties of how this can manifest in the street.
Movies that know how capture this experience with both accuracy and tasteful style are fairly rare; either the portrayal is gut wrenchingly realistic or so overblown with art direction as to dilute the effect of the breakdown. The balanced nervous breakdown film is hard to find. It’s a challenge to make something read clearly when the majority of the dramatic and upsetting lead up takes place internally.
The Sound of Violence (2021) is a gruesome, engaging indie horror film that builds a story and sympathy around one character’s perspective and then pivots, in a slow and steady manner, to the victims’. It plunges you deep into her world and activities; keeping you wondering if the main character is fully aware of what she’s doing or if some of the carnage she’s causing is as much a surprise to her.
Alexis (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is a college student majoring in music who had lost her hearing after a traumatic incident but then regained it later. In pursuit of sounds, Alexis and her friend/quasi-love interest Marie (Lili Simmons) visit a dominatrix to record the noises of her whipping her clients. Alexis becomes obsessive listening to the sound, even getting angry when the dominatrix tells her that her client is at his limit, and she absolutely will not continue whipping him. Something in the noise of the man being hurt captivates Alexis, and she seems to be experiencing synesthesia – a blending of two senses – as she goes through a physical reaction similar to pleasure upon hearing the violence.
As this is a horror movie and Alexis ultimately is the slasher in it, a progression happens where she goes from just seeking out these brutal sounds to making them herself. She subjects a man to a horrific (and wonderfully graphic) death in a recording booth where he tears his skin off before his eyes explode out of his head. She tortures her romantic rival with a hammer and commits a horrendous act against her friend Marie that results in one of the best horror movie climaxes I’ve seen. Usually, I’m not shy about spoilers, but I was so struck by the final scene of this movie that I want people to go into it without knowing what they’re going to see until they get there.
What really makes The Sound of Violence special is that, for the first half or so, Alexis works as a sympathetic character. The scene in the recording booth is the turning point, even though Alexis seems almost surprised by what happened. Her goal is to make this symphony of pain, and we watch the slip as she goes from odd college student to full blown killer – claiming all of the death worth it for the sake of her art. In a time when we are finally rejecting the idea that people can be as terrible as they want as long as what they create is beautiful, this concept feels aptly satirical.
Unlike Alexis, the character in the next movie is very much aware of his slide into insanity, and would prefer it not to happen.
The Voices (2014) is a movie that brings to mind midcentury giallos – interesting gore, interesting violence. It’s a film that is crafted in a thoughtful, unique way with some of the most disturbingly lovely visuals (like Tupperware containers filled with body parts stacked five feet high) and some of the more excellent performances a horror movie ever had. Directed by Marjane Satrapi (director and author of Persepolis) and starring Ryan Reynolds (in a tour de force performance) with a striking color palette and darkly cartoonish sensibilities, it’s amazing to me that this movie isn’t more well-known. I myself didn’t encounter it until recently, and was surprised at how many film-lovers hadn’t heard of it.
Jerry (Reynolds) is a nice, polite, and almost properly medicated factory worker who, like Alexis, is affected by a trauma he experienced as a child. Jerry is a considerably more self-aware character though, and is always worried about losing touch with reality. He unhelpfully discusses his concerns with his cat and dog (both voiced by Reynolds) who behave exactly the way you’d expect from talking cats and dogs: the cat mocks humanity and encourages violence while the dog reminds Jerry that he’s a good man who doesn’t want to hurt people.
What makes The Voices interesting (aside from the art direction, the turbulent tone, the great performances, and the closing musical number) is that Jerry becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s so worried about becoming a monster and so scared that it’s inevitable, that he creates the chaos he was trying to avoid. His first kill happens when he chases after his co-worker Fiona (Gemma Arteton) with no intention of hurting her; the second comes when he’s trying to cover the tracks and accidentally shoves his other co-worker Lisa (Anna Kendrick) and breaks her neck. He finds himself over his head and out of control, and seeks help from his psychiatrist Dr. Warren. When she tries to call the police he takes her hostage, causing the situation to end in a fiery stand-off.
While The Sound of Violence builds sympathy by keeping the viewer unclear on just how far gone Alexis is, The Voices takes the opposite tact: we know exactly what Jerry is thinking the entire time. We see the struggle and we see the grip loosening. Fiona’s head starts talking to him, the cat gets more and more insistent on killing, his apartment sinks into a putrid state not even fit for a slaughterhouse – let alone human living quarters. Jerry hits brick wall after brick wall when he tries to intervene on his own behavior; desperately trying to keep himself stable and medicated as he disintegrates. If there was a chance for him to be normal, not haunted and tormented by trauma and the voices, he would take it in a heartbeat but he lives in our world (for the most part) where mental health resources are inadequate and difficult cases like Jerry don’t get proper care. Also, like people in our world, Jerry has trouble making the tough decisions that would be a harder road for him but would put an end to his stumbling rampage.
Now for something completely different.
If you thought a piece about breakdowns was going to be all horror, boy were you wrong. Get ready for the most upsetting movie to prominently feature ABBA songs. That’s right, we’re talking Muriel’s Wedding (1994).
I’m not too proud to say that I woefully miscategorized this movie before I was lucky enough to watch it. My guess was that it was a film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding where it was going to be kind of goofy and wacky but overall heartwarming (a term I despise but whose necessity I have come to understand). Muriel’s Wedding is painful from beginning to end in a way that makes you want to keep watching.
Toni Collette is Muriel, an overweight compulsive liar, spender, and stealer, who is treated terribly by her beautiful, socially popular friends and dumped on by her family, mostly her crooked politician father. When her friends tell her they no longer want to hang out with her and they’re uninviting her from a trip they’re all taking, Muriel empties her father’s bank account and trots off behind them. At the resort, she runs into Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), someone she knew from high school who hates Muriel’s old friends just as badly as Muriel desires to be them. Rhonda convinces Muriel to take chances, evoking the old adage of the best revenge is living well. They lip sync to “Waterloo” by ABBA, have an amazing trip, and decide to live together in Sydney when their holiday is over.
Things are looking up for Muriel, and for a while, it seems like she’s going to be alright but then Rhonda is suddenly paralyzed from what turns out to be spinal tumors. Muriel finds out her father is being investigated for taking bribes. Through all this, Muriel has been going to a bridal shop and spinning a tale about her fantasy man and her fantasy wedding. Her lie is revealed and she has a breakdown in front of Rhonda and the women at the shop, collapsing in a snotty, heaving heap while still wearing the dress she was trying on.
Muriel agrees to marry South African swimmer David (Daniel Laipaine) so that he can compete for Australia in the Olympics. It’s clear the man is upset with the arrangement, and he speaks sharply and cruelly to the increasingly fragile Muriel. Meanwhile, Muriel’s mother torches the lawn at the family home and kills herself, though Muriel is initially told she died of a heart attack. As someone who has hardly been holding it together, the suicide forces Muriel to take stock of her life. She divorces David, pays back some of the money she stole from her dad, and rescues Rhonda from having to live with her mother in the town where they grew up.
The last bit of the film is Muriel pulling herself back from the edge rather than plummeting over it. For most of the runtime, she makes terrible decisions and can’t understand why people are angry with her. Like Alexis, she seems to be unaware of her problems. Yet, like Jerry, she also knows when she’s doing something wrong. She’s able to face herself only when confronted with the sad possible future: who’s to say she won’t end up like her depressed, intermittently catatonic mother? The suicide and subsequent funeral are like a bucket of ice water thrown in her face, and Muriel decides to take the hard road towards change rather than flounder on as she was.
All three of these movies portray characters breaking down in a variety of ways, some more rooted in reality than others. The Sound of Violence and The Voices play with visuals as a way to explain mental states as well as dazzle the viewer; Muriel’s Wedding takes a more straight-forward character drama approach, allowing the use of ABBA to be the main source of dazzle. The one thing they all have in common (aside from striking performances) is that they are perfectly balanced in their execution and surprising the entire runtime, playing with the viewer in a twisty, non manipulative way so that we, like the characters, have no guess as to where each of them is going to end up.
