Anorexia Nervosa In The Film To The Bone

Mental disorders are often stereotyped and poorly portrayed throughout novels, films, and social media. Due to this people do not understand the hardships others go through when suffering from mental health problems. Eating disorders take place in the lives of ten to fifteen percent of Americans (Mirasol); the other 85 percent of people do not always realize how difficult these disorders can be. However, recently in June of 2017 a film was released in hopes to reveal to people the severity of the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is a mental disorder and disease that is not always so treatable, but Marti Noxon shows us in her film, To the Bone, the reality of this sickness and that through faith, friends, and family anything
is possible. Hadley Freeman, writer of “To the Bone confirms there are (almost) no good movies about anorexia” for The Guardian, provides us with a negative review of the film: “To the Bone’s real problem […] is that it is shallow, sexist[,] and sick.” Freeman stands firm with her statement by saying the characters diagnosed with eating disorders are women with the exception of one male, making the film sexist; however, eighty percent of people diagnosed with an eating disorder are women (Mirasol).
There are seven patients in the movie, six being women, which makes the division, 85 percent female and 15 percent male; therefore, Noxon’s film reflects the statistics. Lindsay McDowell plays Kendra, a young black woman diagnosed with binge eating disorder, and makes multiple appearances throughout the film proving Freeman wrong as she claims all the patients, “are young, attractive, middle-class white
women.” Moreover, Noxon does an incredible job showing the truth of anorexia through her main character Ellen (Lily Collins).
This disease is the fear of gaining weight, people with anorexia look at themselves and see fat when in reality they are unhealthily skinny. Symptoms of anorexia found in the vast majority of those diagnosed include: increased lanugo hair (fine body hair), acrocyanosis (decrease in the amount of oxygen delivered to the extremities), decreased core body temperature, heart rate below 60 BPM, amenorrhea, arrhythmias, ECH abnormalities, congestive heart failure, constipation, crampy abdominal pain, acute pancreatic, peripheral edema, and anemia (Mirasol). Ellen reveals these symptoms and more to us throughout the film; “You like this? The furry?... Lanugo. Your body's trying to keep you warm by making more hair. But you know that, right?” this is a conversation between Dr. Beckham (Keanu Reeves) and Ellen discussing the hair that is growing long and thick all along her body to keep her warm, one of the effects of the poor nutrition. Throughout the entire film, we see the physical effects from anorexia on Ellen, the small, frail body, bruises, repeated fainting, and much more, there are many emotional and mental effects anorexia can have as well that we see Ellen
portraying. Threshold, the in-patient household in which Ellen is staying, is not a typical in-patient. Normal in-patients are hospital based rather than house based like Threshold where the patients have free range of the house and are welcome to eat what they want, if they want. Eating is not required at Threshold, it is only mandatory they sit at the dining table with the other patients every night; within a hospital eating so much a day is mandatory in order for recovery. The monitoring of patients is not realistic, throughout the film the patients hide vomit, purging, excessive exercise, laxatives, and more without the head of the house, Lobo (Retta), finding out. Whereas in an actual hospital there is round the clock surveillance of the patients and multiple people watching out for them. Throughout the entire film, Threshold is the only unrealistic portrayal.
The majority of the film occurs in Threshold, and there is an accident where one of the members of the house that Ellen and the others were close to decides to leave. On top of that Ellen has a fight with another member Luke (Alex Sharp), a boy who she has developed feelings for; at this point in time Ellen is in a bad place and declining. Dr. Beckham asks Anna (Kathryn Prescott), a housing member, to read “Courage,” a poem by Anne Sexton: […] When they called you “cry baby” […] and made you into an alien... you drank their acid and you concealed it. […] the death of bombs and bullets... you did not do it with a banner.
You did it with only a hat to cover your heart. […]
Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing.
Within the first lines of the poem Sexton describes bullying and how people “drank their acid,” and they concealed it; the acid being the bullying and drinking meaning to hide the fact it hurt. When people hide their feelings, anxiety and depression takes over which can often be a cause of anorexia as it was for Ellen. The last line of the poem speaks of swallowing a piece of coal which represents courage. “…charcoal is sometimes given to a patient who has ingested toxic materials” (Nour) we ingest the toxic words when we are bullied by keeping it inside to hide our feelings, and swallowing our courage is meant to keep us fighting for the life we want to live. The coal is representing our courage that we swallowing to fight against the toxic material, in this case bullying, in our bodies to fight for life. Bullying is not always done by others; many people bully themselves (Nour); they see themselves as imperfect, which is what people with eating disorders often do. This poem can be related to many people across the world and is used in To the Bone for that reason. At this time in the film the poem is a voice over by Anna and the screen shows Ellen is doing extreme workouts without eating and continuing to lose weight to an extremely unhealthy level. Later we see Ellen having a dream that brings her to the realization she does not want to die. She sits in a tree with Luke as she looks down, she sees herself lying naked, zero muscle, and dead. This brings her to the awareness that if she does not want to die or lose her loved ones she must swallow her courage, so in the dream she swallows a piece of coal then wakes up. Bringing the movie to an end where she decides to stay at the house continuing to receive treatment and actually try to get better. To the Bone shows us the challenges of overcoming and healing from such an extreme illness; eating disorders are a mental illness that takes a psychological approach to do the healing. Noxon’s film gives us an accurate portrayal of anorexia along with revealing the truth behind the sickness, and that recovering is possible if there is faith.