Girl Interrupted Analysis

Soaked, little, and naked is how the viewer finds Susanna in the middle of Girl, Interrupted. Or rather, soaked, little, naked, and hysterical. A state James Mangold utilizes to further illustrate his message. The film serves as a vehicle for Mangold to discuss madness and the society it exists within. Valerie, the asylum’s registered nurse, throws Susanna, the film’s suicidal protagonist, into a tub filled with water in order to snap Susanna out of her depressed state. Susanna lashes out at Valerie with every hurtful vulgarity she has within her. Despite this, Valerie remains calm and collected. In this interaction between Susanna and Valerie, madness is portrayed in its most basic form; it is an ongoing battle between the individual and the environment surrounding it. The individual is a victim of his environment, overwhelmed into regurgitating the detritus surrounding him that are readily filtered and suppressed by those deemed sane by society.

Mangold
Aside from the tilted angle, she is portrayed in only one frame with a medium shot in which her setting could be revealed. Mangold’s reasoning for limiting this lens is clear when the frame is overlaid with the dialogue in that shot. After Valerie mentions Lisa, Susanna screams, “You banish her for singing to Polly. We were trying to help her.” This is an argument that is surprisingly reasonable for her to make. Mangold frames this part of the scene so the audience focuses on the dialogue here and not Susanna’s hysterical state. Her words take precedence as her body fades into the background. It is not a coincidence that the only instance that Susanna does not seem completely disturbed is when plastered against the backdrop of the institution’s cold walls around her. It forces the audience to redirect their suppositions about the source of the patients’ madness away from the patients and onto the stark environment they are placed