Mad to Be Normal

The film is about the period in time when psychiatrist Ronald David Laing managed his home as a refuge for mentally ill patients. A firm believer against coercion, he allowed the people living there to express themselves naturally in a safe environment, while he and an assistant would listen and try to help, in the hope that their minds would heal themselves. His theories were very much against the general medical opinion so he has come to blows not only with the medical community, but with his bigoted neighbors who didn't approve of not normal people living around them.

In a way, that state of more or less open conflict with the world is what defines the title of the movie. If normal people behave like that, then you must be mad to want to belong with them. Every actor in this film (and check out the great cast) is acting really well and the mood of the movie, depressing as you might expect, is very well framed. Some people accused it of slow pacing, but if you think about it, you can't do a fast paced movie about mental illness. It is a slow and pain causing condition and the only way to understand it is to go slow.

I personally like David Tennant a lot, but I think he was even better cast. He is perfect as the foul mouthed Scottish hipster doctor battling the world for the sake of the patients in his very care. I liked that the movie didn't try to take a side. It very lightly presented Laing's theories then proceeded to show what they meant in practice: with some the results were great, although they didn't lead to healing so much as to less pain, with others the approach was insufficient, while the level of care he afforded his patients made a catastrophic mess of his personal life. The key to the argument is how can a mentally deficient patient decide what's the best course of action for him and how can anyone else prove their treatment is what the patient needed when it alters the very essence of a person's mind? Who would be the more entitled to make a decision? The patient before a treatment or the patient after it? Not to mention society at large, family and doctors, who also feel entitled to pieces of people's lives.

Bottom line: not a beautiful film, but one that makes you ask questions. It provides no answers of its own, though.

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.

As one with direct experience with the psychiatric hospitalization system, I would highly recommend this movie to any mental health professional. It presents a revolutionary, yet obvious take on how to treat mental illness and how to improve the quality of life for a patient who is suffering, by simply treating them like a human being in need of love and attention. David Tennant and Elisabeth Moss both presented the philosophy of such an endeavor well through their performances. This is a truly human story and a wonderful sneak peek into what can happen if we use our common sense and do what we feel is right. Unfortunately even today, many years after the events of this story, there are still challenges to overcome to give mentally ill patients the best care they deserve and focus on their needs above all. Are we protecting them or protecting ourselves from them? Speaking from the inside, I would say I'm not so sure.

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.

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.