Fictions About Illusions

This article was published in DNA, 30th May 2010. 

After the observance of World Schizophrenia Day this week, Satyen K Bordoloi turns the spotlight on cinema’s fascination for this illness and how realistically it has been portrayed on the silver screen.

Schizophrenia is by far the most ‘abused’ and misrepresented mental disorder in both language and cinema. In our day-to-day language we regularly use ‘schizophrenic’ as an adjective for almost anything — country, corporations, education…even love. In cinema, often our villains and even heroes display acute symptoms of the disease and in many cases they are labeled schizophrenics.

So while in Hindi cinema you have Shah Rukh Khan displaying a schizophrenic distortion of perception in Baazigar and Darr, in Hollywood you have an Anakin Skywalker who becomes Darth Vader in the Star Wars series or even Gollum whose alter ego Smeagol in The Lord Of The Ringstrilogy is driven to schizophrenic madness by ‘evil’ forces beyond his control.

The sacred grove
Cinema and schizophrenia thus make for strange bedfellows, with the former using the disease and its symptoms in the most random, inaccurate and stigmatising way.

And then, in 2001, schizophrenia suddenly became the ‘talk of the town’ worldwide, and this time it wasn’t being talked about in solely negative terms at all. Such a shift in perception was made possible by the global success of Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, and the realistic depiction of a schizophrenic by its lead, Russell Crowe.

The film was based on the real life story of Nobel Prize-winning scientist, John Nash who suffered from, but learnt to live with his ‘incurable’ mental disorder. Despite romanticising the illness and concentrating on the patient’s visual hallucinations instead of the auditory hallucinations which are more frequent, the film was hailed for both its realistic approach, and for giving hope to millions of patients and their loved ones with its message that one can successfully live with this ailment despite its paralysing nature.

Marathi cinema has made one of the boldest attempts to go beyond A Beautiful Mind, in the form of Devrai, a refreshingly holistic and factual film about the disease, its symptoms, social stigma and treatment. Atul Kulkarni essayed the role of a paranoid schizophrenic obsessed with saving a sacred grove (devrai in Marathi) with subtlety and simplicity. The beautiful metaphor of devrai — an inclusive virgin forest left untouched for generations — expresses brilliantly a vision of a world that has a place even for those that are different. One of the strengths of this film, directed by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar, is the depiction of the embarrassment and social stigma faced by the patient’s relatives. Yet bothDevrai and A Beautiful Mind drive home the point that it is only the love and care of those closest to the patient that enables them to cope and live. In doing so, both the films put the spotlight on the audience, pushing them to be compassionate toward those that are not like the rest. In fact, A Beautiful Mind further makes the point that, far from being a burden, schizophrenics can make highly valuable contributions to society and humanity.

Familial matters
One of the toughest aspects of making a film on illness is depicting the internal anguish and trauma of the patient. The 1994 film Clean Shavenmanages this rare cinematic brilliance. The protagonist Peter covers all mirrors, travels in a car where all windows are covered with papers, sits in a corner covering his ears, and cuts a part of his scalp and removes a fingernail as he believes he is bugged. The tragic finale where Peter is shot dead thanks to the misconceptions of a detective points a finger at the audience, asking them, who is really schizophrenic.

The 1995 Australian film Angel Baby, like Devrai, explores the societal and familial dimensions of schizophrenia. In this film, two schizophrenics fall in love, the woman gets pregnant, and both decide to forego their medication, with disastrous consequences. This multiple award-winning film is a sympathetic portrayal of those afflicted with schizophrenia and those helping them. Avoiding clichés, the film makes the case for the rehabilitation of patients that will later be affirmed by A Beautiful Mind andDevrai.

Despite all the advances in medicine, the causes and treatment of this illness that afflicts over one per cent of humanity is still a mystery. Yet things today are not as bad as in the 1960s, when it was considered a ‘functional illness’ caused by the family. The Oscar-winning Swedish film Through A Glass Darkly, from master director Ingmar Bergman, is based on this thesis, putting the blame on the family. A schizophrenic woman goes to an island with her family to recuperate, only to suffer a relapse in a dysfunctional family. Harriet Andersson’s performance as the woman expecting a vision of god from under a wallpaper has audiences riveted in this multilayered, complex drama.

The 1971 film Family Life by Ken Loach, is one Indians can relate to. Shot in documentary style to heighten realism, it tells the story of Janice. This sensitive, young girl is pushed into schizophrenia by her orthodox and rigid family who demand submission to tradition from her. Though Janice fights back, the societal norms and emotional repression tramples her individuality, leading to schizophrenia, for which she undergoes brutal treatment. The film is an indictment of both a cruel family and the mental healthcare system of the period. Sadly, a far more ruthless system still exists in India where patients are chained to pillars.

Aparna Sen’s 15 Park Avenue handles different aspects of a patient’s life and family. Like the disease, the film is often moody, seemingly disjointed, and demands patience from of the viewer. Mitali, played by Konkana Sen Sharma, believes that she is happily married with five kids who live in 15 Park Avenue. Except that the place exists only in her imagination. The film delves into how a family, often sensitive, and at other times cruel and amused, try to come to terms with the patient as well as their own guilt.

Mad in a mad world
Although medical science today refutes the theory that familial conditions could be entirely responsible for the illness, family does play a crucial part in aggravating as well as treating it. Thus India, with a still prevalent emphasis on familial orthodoxy, has one of the largest cases of schizophrenia, both treated and untreated, with close to 8.7 millionpeople suffering from it. Sadly, it is the same orthodoxy that prevents families from seeking treatment for mental illness, branding it instead as ordinary mental stress. It is estimated that in developing countries like India, 90% of people remain untreated due to the same reason.

Despite these accurate and sensitive portrayals, the world of cinema is full of ‘schizophrenic’ treatment of the condition. Be it in Me, Myself and Irenethat educes the condition to a comic but obscene treatment, or in scores of other films where the patient is reduced to a caricatured madman.

In Devrai, the patient’s sister defends her brother before her husband, “At least his anger comes from an illness. But what about all those that cause riots, corruption and violence in the world. Are they sane?”

The husband then makes a statement out of exasperation, “Sometime I wonder if the whole society has turned schizophrenic, trying to solve all its problems with hatred and violence.” A telling comment on our times, which leads us to wonder whether, as Akira Kurosawa out it, “In a mad world, only the mad are sane”.