To the Bone

This one's tricky.

It has beautiful shots, great acting, charming potential. It has humor. It has frightening appearances of semi-well known actors thin as paper to pull off their roles. I'm impressed with Lily Collins' acting. I'm impressed with the message that the movie is trying to pull off.

So what's the tricky part, you ask?

There is way too much hinted at that never gets resolution. Some of the house-members get nothing for story. Some of their behaviors never get explanation. Expulsions are hinted at, but never resolved.

What we have here is that tricky realm of trying to make a movie without beating the audience over the head with a message, and that's just plain hard to do. It's a tightrope walk, and should you veer too far over one side (or the other), you're going down.

This is okay if your focus is only on Ellen's story, while you stop caring about the rest of them, but... They bring them too close to Ellen and too close to the nature of what they are trying to combat to simply disregard them later on, which is where you run into trouble with "message movies".

I always think of the tightrope walk that was Norman Jewison's ...And Justice For All, starring Al Pacino. Talk about being beaten over the head with a message... and yet Jewison still managed to make at least an enjoyable story about it.

But it wasn't Rollerball. It didn't have a driving theme throughout the movie that used its message only as backdrop, while it pushed Jonathan E and his quest to find a way to keep playing the game he loved, even while everything and everyone was trying to push him out. There, the message was behind the story, and we still got it.

Here, the message drives the story, and that doesn't nearly work as well.

I will say this, that it does bring to light a lot about eating disorders and the way the world looks at eating disorders, and there certainly is a lot here that works well at trying to understand how difficult it is to heal from such a thing.

I only wish there was a better movie, behind it all.

Now, this is purely my opinion and if you disagree all the power to you. However, I have struggled with anorexia for most of my life, since I was seven in fact. I was lucky enough to never end up in a clinic, but I do know what they are like. This whole "we won't force you to eat or do room searches" just isn't accurate. If you do get to the point where you have to do inpatient, it's nothing like this. You can expect to sit with others and finish your food in a certain amount of time, and you have to (or say hello to the tube or soylent). You can expect room searches for things such as vomit stashes, diet pills, razors, and just about anything else. Forget trying to secretly burn calories because they will literally sit you down and have some one watch you to make sure you aren't so much as tapping a finger.

On the other hand I think this movie did it's best and I appreciate all the actors and directors hard work. However I really don't think this portrays what living with an eating disorder is like. The control aspect they definitely nailed, how family members handle disorders and inpatient treatment I feel was gravely off. Of course I only have my experience and those that have been willing to share theirs with me.

When I heard about this movie I was sceptical. I am a male who has suffered from Anorexia since I was 14 (I am 25 now) and have been in 2 inpatient units during this time. I have gone from a weight that literally caused my heart to stop to one that is normal according to society and have recently graduated to become a doctor.

To The Bone starts off with an all too familiar look into the life of someone with an eating disorder in an inpatient unit. Once she is 'let loose' into the world she is clearly no where close to recovery. We get some degree of insight into her life struggling with her condition. Lily Collins is perfectly suited to this role given her eating disorder history. I am slightly concerned that this role may have set something off in her mind to trigger a relapse (if not now, then in the future), but as long as she has been able to cope I am more at ease. The attention to detail into her character's daily life is incredible. From being able to recite calories in foods to the countless hours spent doing sit-ups in her room, I was amazed as to how accurate they wanted this movie to be. In my eyes, it was in no way an exaggeration and could be considered an under- representation as to the daily life of someone with an eating disorder.

As the story progresses the tone becomes a lot more serious. It makes it quite hard to watch at times, because you do feel concerned for the well being of the main character and her family. It certainly made me emotional at times because it re- surfaced memories of things I put me and my family through. Again, this just highlights how eerily accurate the film portrays the condition. I could literally put names of people I met during recovery to the faces of the characters (patients, doctors, nurses and family members included).

Aside from being concerned as to the well being of Lily Collins in this role, the other problem I had going into watching this movie was that it may glamorise eating disorders. However, after the first 10 minutes of watching it I knew this was not the case. It felt a lot more like seeing the world through a real anorexic's eyes.

The other obvious problem I had was that this may be potentially 'triggering' for people with eating disorders. I still have this reservation, however I cannot conceive any way a film like this could not have been triggering. Every person experiences an eating disorder differently and have their own personal triggers. Anything in this film could have been triggering for different reasons. What I know is that those without the condition will receive an invaluable insight into the life of someone with an eating disorder. In a world where awareness for such disorders is certainly on the up, many people still think eating disorders are a 'life choice' and that sufferers should just eat. i hope this film makes people realise the daily struggles of sufferers and that it offers sufferers ambition to recover.

This was the perfect opportunity to clear up so many myths about eating disorders, especially anorexia. But we saw Hollywood's version of recovery and their version of Anorexia Nervosa an often fatal mental illness.

They should have addressed so many real issues but they padded it out with fluff.

Eating disorder is a very serious yet common problem among teenagers. there are not much of the media (such as films or TV shows) that depicts about it. there are a few, but sadly it didn't got much attention. so, when i first heard of this movie, i was pretty excited. and when i finished watching this movie, i was... pretty confused.

no, it's not that the plot that is confusing, rather than the movie's quality. is this movie a better movie about eating disorder? YES. is this a great movie? i don't think so.

Let's start with the acting. well, i'm going to give me praise to lily collins. this is definitely a better performance from her. It showed how much she actually cares about this character and film. Keanu Reeves' performance is weak and at times forced. other supporting actors are doing a pretty good job. even they didn't really develop well, which brings out my main problem to this movie, development. characters which are far more interesting to know is drawn out, by you can guess it- cheap subplot romance.

i do expect a romance from this film when i watched the trailers. but i didn't think it's going to take much time that it drowns out the actual story i'm expecting. the first half of the movie, when the romance doesn't got involved, i'm pretty much in love. it portrays how much our main character is struggling. but after the whole romance got involved, it became unbalanced. those time could be used for actual things to make us feel more about the main character, but it dumbly got drowned out and only slipped by a line or two. i know that too much flashback is a pain, but seeing how this movie focuses on her struggle and journey, could you please at least show us a thing or two that make her struggling? at least, the ending makes it all up, it has some great emotional moments, that scene with her biological mother is somehow works out pretty well.

all and all, it's still a decent movie. and by this, i wish there are more movies about the topic.