Mad to Be Normal

In the 60's a revolutionary treatment for mental illness was tried. A psychiatrist set up a place for mentally ill patients to live without medication or electric shock. They were left alone to freely act out their delusions & madness. Of course they weren't allowed to inflict harm on themselves or to each other. The doctor lived at the center with them. They each had their own room but were monitored 24/7 around the clock. If it appeared no progress was being made by letting them work through their stuff on their own LSD was offered. A couple of drops on their tongue would be administered but only with the patients permission. This movie tries to tell me that this was a neat-o experiment without any overwhelming problems but I'm sure in real life situations occurred that were not shown in the movie.

Set in the 1960's, the film centers on the rather revolutionary psychiatric treatments of the time conducted by Dr. R. D. Laing. David Tennant stars as Laing, who was strongly opposed to accepted treatments such as electroshock therapy and tranquilizers for mental illness ,believing more in non-drug (except for LSD) and more natural therapies. Most of Laing's work took place at Kingsley Hall, between 1965 to 1970 in East London.

Elisabeth Moss co-stars here as Angie Wood, a graduate student at Columbia, who while attending one of Laing's lectures is completely taken in by his charismatic persona and they will soon begin a relationship. There's a most solid cast in the movie, including Gabriel Byrne and Michael Gambon.

Unfortunately, the film itself despite its fine cast, became a real slog for me to stay with, with its very deliberate pacing and quite depressive tone. Also, for whatever reason I wasn't able to really connect with the characters as presented.

Overall, I thought this drama had some quite interesting aspects to it, but I was not able to emotionally connect with the characters here , and combined with the other factors as mentioned, I can't say it was entertaining.

David Tennant plays psychologist R. D. Laing in the late 1960s, when his public exposure, due to his advocacy of LSD in therapy, was at its peak. Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, and Gabriel Byrne support him.

The movie portrays him as overworked, compassionate, and occasionally overcome by the sense that he was supposed to take care of everyone, but who was to take care of him? With that cast, you can expect and do get some fine performances, but what might have turned into slightly amped shows up with a far more cinematic twist, starting with Tennant's rock-star entrance. Cameraman Ali Asad avoids tight close-ups, lending context but avoiding intimacy. This seems contrary to Laing's methods, but does emphasize his sense of alienation, both from the more standard drug-them-until-they're-no-trouble model as portrayed here, and his sense of loneliness.

When an excellent cast turn in strong performances - David Tennant, Elizabeth Moss and Gabriel Byrne are all outstanding in the lead roles - how can you end up with an unimpressive, unaffecting film? Can't be the subject matter - RD Laing was a fascinating, divisive, bold, brilliant, reckless public intellectual whose opinions and ideas about psychiatry and society challenged the established order of, well... everything.

I'm sorry to say responsibility for this mediocre, somewhat messy film lies with writer/director Robert Mullan. The dialogue is often cliched, the scenes poorly constructed and the direction oddly distant and static. All of which makes for a rather uninvolving experience, which is a great pity given the talent at his disposal not to mention the compelling story there to be told. There's simply no real point of view to get hold of.

Laing's work remains acutely controversial, genuinely reaching for something even he as a highly qualified practitioner with a highly original brain and skilled writer could not quite realise. There's an argument his deep insights were too far ahead of his time, but equally he might just have been so damaged, deluded and egocentric that he didn't care who or what got broken. Some of that is there in the film but despite the warm colour palette this exploration of a more interesting British counterpart to the likes of Timothy Leary and Arthur Janov fails to engage, and leaves you cold.

Despite rd Laings many flaws he did nevertheless revolutionise the treatment of patients right across the medical spectrum, as someone that suffers from mental health issues I can assure you that the problems and dogmas Laing confronted - largely on his own, still persist today in the medical industry, but thankfully because of laings outside the box thinking it is far less pervasive, for instance i can see many of laings methods - namely treating patients with dignity in order to understand and effectively treat them, present in the field and treatment of autism, most modern and successful treatments of autism are all based on this principle, a principle that Laing pioneered and fought for. Laing definitely had his own demons and some of his eccentricities, lack of structure and awareness definitely lead to some patients being harmed , but considering he was a pioneer working mostly on his own - he was still very successful - especially when compared with his peers - who were later revealed - through experiments where they were the subjects- unknowingly - were unable to distinguish between the insane and the sane, in these experiments the leading psychiatrists in the most prominent psych wards in America admitted completely normal qualified psychiatrists and held them in psych wards against their will until they admitted they were insane, so the widespread harm that was being caused by the industry at the time was prevalent and almost guaranteed, laing was one of the first to publicly acknowledge this and had the courage to fight a constant uphill battle for most of his career. So Laing came out well ahead of his peers and at the very least should be acknowledged for dragging this field kicking and screaming into the 21st century, those that dispute his contributions need to take a hard look at the murky and well hidden history of psychiatry and I'm not partial to the hippy dippy anti authority attitudes that characterised this generation.

The movie was great, a contemplative and interesting biopic of a maverick pioneer, a fly on the wall docu drama without a Clear or structured narrative, although I did get a vague " Icarus flying to close to the sun theme" The acting is top notch from the all star cast, a well crafted and interesting film that I would recommend to anyone interested in psychology. 7/10.

Although I'm not sure how true this story is.