Many films about madness fall within this tradition that many artistic works have undertaken. If we pay attention to the different books, paintings or films produced for centuries, we observe that many of them are a social critique (often more or less hidden). Madness is a very good way for film directors to denounce a subject by which they feel affected.
Madness & Politics
As we could expect, one of the recurrent critical themes concerns politics, both political leaders and policies made by governments.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a good example of that. Indeed, the key of the film lies in a critique of the way mental hospitals look after their patients. Randle McMurphy shows his mates how much they are manipulated and looked down upon by the staff. Little by little, he will show them that they can live like everyone else, which is a key point according to me. How can we best deal with madness ? By isolating people who are not "normal" or by integrating them into society ? McMurphy clearly chooses the second option.
Madness & Education
Sometimes, a fear of something is the origin of somebody's madness. For instance, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a patient of the mental hospital does not speak fluently only because of a neurosis. His education and his environment prevent him from living normally. It is because of the way the hospital deals with its patients that he does not have any self-confidence. Even tthough he is an adult, he behaves as a child and thinks through the nurse. When at the end, McMurphy organizes a party in the hospital, this patient forgets about authority and what he has been told. He begins to speak fluently but as soon as the nurse arrives and moralizes him, he goes back to his original vegetative state.
Madness & Memory
Memory and the total loss of memory, amnesia, have always interested filmmakers, probably because it is the easiest way to explain madness. Imagine you do not remember exactly what happened at a moment of your life, it will be easy to make you believe you did things you actually did not do. More impressive, your memory can be disturbed by your dreams so that you do not know what you have really done. It becomes difficult to tell the difference between reality and a dream world. This theme is explained in Inception, a film made by Christopher Nolan. The theory of the film is that we cannot know when we are in a dream except when we see something impossible or when we really think about that in the dream. We understand we were in a dream only when we wake up, for different reasons: loss of gravity or being able to fly (that really wakes you up !), death in the dream, etc.
This problematic of memory is the main topic of another film by Christopher Nolan. In Memento, the main character, Leonard, has anterograde memoria, which prevents him from storing memories of recent events. In practice, he cannot remember what he did before the last 15 minutes. So he is obliged to write down what is important so that he can remember it when he needs it. However, this kind of strange pathology can sometimes become a real madness because it is impossible for him to really believe what others tell him. Indeed, other people use his disability to manipulate him and make him do what they want. For example, a character of the film, who considers himself, one of the best friends of Leonard, uses him to kill people. Leonard lost his wife when he lost his memory; she was killed so he had decided to take his revenge. However, he has already taken it, but his friend continues to make him believe the murderer of his wife is still alive so that he can use him as a hit man.
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