Eternal Beauty

The abstractions of mental illness presented in a truly original way with jaw dropping performances by all the cast but an out of this world portrayal of the tortured Jane by Sally Hawkins.

A Sally Hawkins performance is always so enthralling. Her latest role, in Craig Roberts's dark comedy, sees her play Jane a woman living with paranoid schizophrenia. There's a stark sense of isolation here - scenes take place in rooms that are half-empty, but filled with long, hungry shadows.

It has light, funny moments. When Jane falls for Mike (David Thewlis), someone also chewed up and spat out by the mental health system, they become frolicking lovers in a French New Wave classic. However, the movie is never unfaithful to the psychological reality of its central character.

Eternal Beauty shows, we might not be able to conquer our demons, but we can try to live with them. This is a nuanced, evolved take on mental illness than most films are capable of.

While I didn't really rate this title very highly at only 7.0 out of 10, I am bothering to review it here simply because of two things. First Sally Hawkins performance as Jane and second, because I can only be all in favour of anything that helps to raise awareness of mental health problems.

I live now in Thailand where there is absolutely zero understanding of, or interest in, mental health issues. Even in Western societies today, there is STILL such a degree of misunderstanding of mental health problems that it is still common for people to think that mental illness is a fall-back excuse for sufferers' "bad" or inappropriate behavior. The cry of "just pull yourself together" is all too common even these days and even among people who should know better, with education about the matter being so readily available to anyone who cares enough to look for it.

"Eternal Beauty" should be a lesson to anyone who has even a bare notion about what mental illness is. Sally Hawkins' portrayal of a young woman suffering from schizophrenia is an object lesson in how that condition affects the sufferer and those around him or her.

This is not an easy movie to watch but that is really the point. It's not an easy condition to live with, either as the sufferer or as family. Sally gives yet another wonderful performance here, just as she did in "Made In Dagenham" and as the wonderful "Maudie". She has quite a distinguished career already at only 44 years of age. She has, I'm sure, an even more distinguished career ahead of her.

Watch "Eternal Beauty". It's a challenging movie but very worth the effort.

JMV

This is a good film. I was sort of misled by the trailer. I thought it was a comedy. It isn't. It definitely has some funny moments but it is a lot more than that. Having close experience with mental illness, I found this to be an excellent portrayal of schizophrenia. It was chilling and heart breaking but heartwarming at the same time.

Based upon the trailer and the streaming service's short description, I dove into this flick expecting another charming and playfully dry independent production that contained much British Isles eccentricity, as I am very fond of such works. What this film soon emerged as is a knuckleball; the baseball pitch that (if thrown right) initially looks like it will be easy to catch but then starts darting, drifting and diving all around, making the pitch very challenging to track and catch. This is a heavy film, but that's a very good thing. Psychosis appears to be effectively captured - uncertainty about what is a delusion and what is reality as well as a strong non-linearity. This makes the film, like a knuckleball, challenging to track. This flick is a challenge that only a certain portion of the populace will want to undertake, but for those who do, it will provide much to ponder regarding psychoses and will linger in your stream of consciousness.

I am pleased that I encountered this work. Hopefully you will be, too.