Three Christs

It's not a feel good movie, however it does open the viewers up to better understanding individuals with identity disorders.

Milton Rokeach was an American social psychologist. In the late 1950s and early 1960s worked in a Michigan mental institution and devised an approach to study three different men, each who claimed to be the real Jesus Christ. His approach was to put the three men together and have sessions, eliminating their contact with other patients.

The movie is less of a biography and more of a dramatization of what all went on. Richard Gere is in the role of the doctor, and they changed his name to Dr. Stone. Truthfully the movie moves pretty slowly most times and I can understand that some viewers might become bored and abandon the viewing. My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library and found it worthwhile. All the actors, most very accomplished, are uniformly good in their roles.

This is just a well-made movie of a curious chapter in human psychology.

Greetings again from the darkness. Based on the actual events documented in the book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti" by Social Psychologist Milton Rokeach, the film turns ground-breaking work from 60 years ago into a generic, somewhat bland big screen production ... albeit with a talented cast. Director Jon Avnet (FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, 1991) co-wrote the script with Eric Nazarian, and they evidently believed the strong cast would be enough. Instead, we get what in days past would have been described as the TV movie of the week.

The actual story is quite interesting. Dr. Alan Stone (the dramatized version of Dr. Rokeach) is played here by a blond-haired Richard Gere. Dr. Stone comes to Michigan's Ypsilanti State Hospital in 1959 to study delusions of schizophrenics. Up to that time, we are informed that only extreme treatments were utilized, with minimal psychoanalysis practiced. Dr, Stone's approach is through therapeutic treatments. Specifically, he arranges for group therapy consisting of only three patients - each who claims to be God/Christ. Leon (Walton Goggins) demands to be addressed as God. He is the most perceptive of the three, though it's quite clear, he mostly wants a friend. Joseph (Peter Dinklage) says he is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, though he speaks with a British accent, listens to opera, and wants only to return to England (a place he's never been). Clyde (Bradley Whitford) claims to be Christ "not from Nazareth", and he spends much of each day in the shower attempting to scrub away a stench that only he can smell.

The film is at its best, and really only works, when the doctor and the three patients are in session. It allows the actors to play off each other, and explores the premise of how they go about working through the confusion of having each believe the same thing ... while allowing Dr Stone's approach to play out. Where things get murky and clog up the pacing are with the number of additional characters who bring nothing of substance to the story. Stone's wife Ruth (Julianna Margulies in a throwaway role) pops up periodically with alcoholic tendencies or a pep talk for hubby. Stone's young research assistant Becky (Charlotte Hope, "Game of Thrones") seems to be present only as an object of desire for all the Gods, and to remind us of the era's drug experimentation. And beyond those, Stone carries on a constant battle with hospital administrators played by Kevin Pollack, Stephen Root, and a rarely-seen-these-days Jane Alexander (we shouldn't forget she's a 4-time Oscar nominee).

Alec Baldwin's "I am God" from MALICE is still the best, but it's always fun to watch a God complex ... and this film offers four. The story is bookended with Dr Stone dictating his preparatory notes for a hearing on his professional actions, and the film does serve as a reminder that electroshock therapy and severe drug therapy are likely not as effective as empathy for many patients. It's rare that God, Freud and Lenny Bruce are all quoted in the same film, but mostly this one just never pushes far enough.

I started out watching this film with some skepticism as psychiatric patients are so often misrepresented. As someone who worked in a state psychiatric facility for a couple of decades, I'm quite familiar with paranoid schizophrenics, and I have to say they were aptly portrayed in Three Christs. I'm not familiar with the study on which it is based but it did influence a lot of what was to come in treatment for these kinds of patients. The message that came across is one that I incorporated into my practice: treating people with respect, dignity, warmth and caring does wonders. The delusions may not go away, but they recede into the background as the patients start to feel cared for and better about life in general. That "Dr. Stone/Stein" was a warm and caring doctor is unquestionable, at least according to the film, and that in itself is a great model for any psychiatric student to emulate.

Aside from that, the film, I believe, would have a limited audience as most people are not terribly interested in the subject. Even someone like me who is interested in the subject found the film boring in select passages. Overall, the actors did a good job with the material.

This is an engrossing film with a very intriguing premise: if you treat 3 paranoid, schizophrenic patients each of whom thinks he is Jesus Christ isolating them from other mental patients in a state hospital, will one dominate the others or will they learn to bring joy, hope and companionship to their fellows? Dr. Alan Stone and his Psychology intern, thinks he can do the latter.

This story unfolds in the 60s when the accepted treatment for psychiatric patients is harsh and inhumane by today's standards. It consisted of either shock therapy, use of drugs or lobotomy. Dr. Stone would not have none of those because he believes these so-called clinical protocols simply "warehoused" the patients, not treated them. He believed rather in exploring their mind, understanding it by means of gentle interactions with the patients. The establishment thought this was crossing the boundary of "normal clinical protocols." But he asserts that without risks, there can be no breakthroughs.

Peter Dinklage stands out as patient Joseph Cassel. He inhabits the role and you deeply empathize with him and what happens to him. The same is true with Walton Goggins as Leon Gabor with all his pent-up libidinal urges and philosophical ruminations about identity. And we certainly relate with Richard Gere as Alan Stone whose persistence amidst resistance from his colleagues is commendable.

So, the question that the viewer asks is, did he succeed? There's only one way to find out.