Explanation of madness

Madness is a kind of disease which is is characterized by abnormal behaviours such as violence, lacks of memory, hallucinations and strange decisions. For many centuries, people thought that craziness was a representation of the Devil in one's mind. For that reason, mad people have always been feared by normal ones. Nowadays, people regard madness as a disease which can be explained by scientist arguments, and even sometimes be cured.

Madness in film

We saw in introduction that we can find many films about madness. However, in my opinion, among them there are different kinds of movies. Sometimes, madness is an allegory of something else (for example when the film maker wants to criticise or give a message). Some other films deal with craziness only for scenaristic interests, even though it is not always realistic. These two kinds of movies will be explained in parts 2 and 3. In this part, we are going to talk about films which want to explain a form of madness.

Indeed, we can find many films which deal with madness, only because they want to show how difficult it is to live with this disease and how it works. A Beautiful Mind directed by Ron Howard is a very good example of this kind of film about madness. This movie is based on the life of John Nash, a mathematician who won the Nobel Price in Economics. The main character is a genius in mathematics, however he is completely asocial and develops a schizophrenia (he sees people who do not exist) as we can see in the following extract:

A Beautiful Mind shows that it is possible to live with a mental disease when the ill person is aware of the problem. In my opinion, this film gives hope to every person who knows somebody who has a mental illness. However, it also shows how difficult it is for a patient to admit that what he sees does not exist. How would I respond if I was told I was crazy ? I would probably react as he does.

Different kinds of madness ?

According to a scientific point of view, there are different kinds of madness. Medicine uses the term of "disorder" instead of "madness". It distinguishes different disorders :

• child and adolescent psychiatry
• cognitive disorders
• psychotic disorders
• sleep disorders
• ...

In cinema, most interesting disorders are psychotic ones because their origin comes from a mental instability, instead of problems in life. Among psychotic disorders, we can mention schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder which is characterised by a breakdown of the process of thinking. The patient can have hallucinations, paranoia or delusions. It is hard not to mention Fight Club here, since the two main characters of the movie eventually become an unique person which does not distinguish his own life from the other ones anymore. "Where is my mind ?"

Sometimes, the film director creates the scenario including craziness, but he does not only want to explain a kind of craziness, and its effects on people. Madness is a part of the movie, but it is an allegory of something else the film maker wants to denounce.