Jupiter's Wife

When I first saw it on the DVD shelf at the library, I thought, "Oh, another bag lady movie." But the blurb on the case made it look different. And it is. Maggie is a compelling case study. "Mild schizophrenia" is what she says her diagnosis is. But that doesn't wrap it up. It's her smile, her cheerful reaction to her disastrous situation, her playful imaginings, that distinguish her. We might pass off her fantasy life, where she dwells in a world of demigods and movie stars, as a weakness revealing her inability to deal with her personal problems. But it turns out that there's an element of truth to her stories. Then, an uncanny incident of clairvoyance makes you wonder. Is she as crazy as she seems? Or is she in contact with some cosmic order of reality? Is her mythologizing of the people in her past an escapism or a reaching out to a more elevated essence of things? We all fantasize, if only while dreaming. Maggie's commitment to fantasy is scary to contemplate, but only different in intensity to what we all indulge in. Film maker Michel Negroponte approaches his subject sympathetically, with admirable control and lack of judgmentalism. His documentary is skillfully structured without calling attention to the techniques employed. He gives us Maggie, and she haunts us.

This is a very unusual documentary film. A film maker (Michel Negroponte) happens upon a mentally ill homeless lady (Maggie) who lives in New York's Central Park and befriends her--getting her to agree to be filmed over a period lasting several years. It is interesting to see the lady, as she clearly has schizophrenia and it's an interesting portrait of her life. Despite her being homeless and having a very tenuous hold on reality, Michel does not seem to get her assistance or call in competent psychological help. Instead, and this is the part that is pretty weird, he spends years trying to tease out what this woman's prior life had been based on her irrational though occasionally metaphorical speech as well as by making friends with people who know her. In some ways, his invasive following of the woman with a camera seems rather bizarre (perhaps exploitative) and his need to discover the truth about her made me occasionally wonder if BOTH of them were perhaps ill! Still, despite Michel's strange obsession and desire to make sense of Maggie's life, it is interesting and shows you the often marginal existence the severely mentally ill often have.

This is a great film for a psychology or social work class or for anyone who has a family member who is struggling with severe mental illness.

I saw this when it came out; it's a memorable documentary of a sadness and hope. I have certain reservations about the narrator's intrusion into Maggie's story, but the material is presented honestly. The surprise ending is a real shocker. I would recommend this film to anyone, and I hope the DVD has some updates on Maggie's story.

I wonder how N.Y. City is handling homeless people now. They may have even less of a chance. Perhaps medication is helping people like Maggie. Look, The Movie's great, how many lines am I supposed to write? It was in focus, I could see everyone real clearly. It was not too long. On the other hand, it was not unduly short.

Maggie Cogan is certainly more charming and "lucid" than many of the schizophrenic homeless, and yet I was frustrated with the fact that she was "enabled", partly by the filmmaker but more annoyingly by the upper West Side "friend" (wife of actor Astin Pendleton) to continue her weary existence as some sort of free independent spirit rather than as a woman suffering from a disease that should at the very least require her to be on medication to allow her to live with some semblance of "normalcy". Maggie seems to understand this enabling, even making a remark about a better class of garbage on the Upper West Side, but schizophrenia as far as I understand it does not affect intelligence. One hopes Maggie gets to live on her horse farm.

Jupiter's Wife is a documentary that caters to your sense of thought and inquisitiveness about the way the homeless live. Why are they homeless? Who are they? The film maker uses the life of one person in Central Park NYC, Maggie Cogan, to illuminate us. Michael Negroponte shows us a life that has made unexpected turns and in the end reveals much more than what we originally thought, a complex story that untangles itself as Michael deciphers Maggie's mythological life explanations. He also flashes images of his own family life which help us make a transition from our normal existence to that of Maggie's. In the end I was left with a sense of understanding and profound melancholy over Maggie's plight.