Firstly, I did enjoy this film, it had strong characters and some interesting scenes. However, I've worked in a mental hospital and I can say that where I worked was nothing like that! The patients were supervised a lot more and given much more attention than Poppy , N and the others were given.
I suppose it could be argued that it was being portrayed as how the hospital 'felt' to the patients rather than reality, but this is not shown really in the film. It could also be looked at in a Kafka-esquire nightmarish slant on reality, but again , I think that would be reading too much into it. I know it is a film about madness, but it is obvious in it what is real and what is not.
Poppy is the character in the film that is supposedly sane, who as been sent to the hospital by accident (like One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest), and this was another thing that bugged me. How on earth can you do so badly filing in a job application form that you end up in a mental hospital?? This was the reason given in the film and I half expected it to turn out that Poppy WAS mad after all, as it seems such a daft reason!
I think the only reason Poppy was in hospital was because the Plot demanded that she was. The modern day NHS simply does not operate like this.
And again and again I got a little bit ticked off by the rail road plot that sent this poor woman down a pretty predictable decline into actual madness, until it reached its rather disappointing ending.
Still, I don't want to put anyone off as I did actually enjoy this film, but more for the good performances than the plot, which turns the NHS into some sort of ghastly monolithic institution very far away from reality.
I suppose it could be argued that it was being portrayed as how the hospital 'felt' to the patients rather than reality, but this is not shown really in the film. It could also be looked at in a Kafka-esquire nightmarish slant on reality, but again , I think that would be reading too much into it. I know it is a film about madness, but it is obvious in it what is real and what is not.
Poppy is the character in the film that is supposedly sane, who as been sent to the hospital by accident (like One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest), and this was another thing that bugged me. How on earth can you do so badly filing in a job application form that you end up in a mental hospital?? This was the reason given in the film and I half expected it to turn out that Poppy WAS mad after all, as it seems such a daft reason!
I think the only reason Poppy was in hospital was because the Plot demanded that she was. The modern day NHS simply does not operate like this.
And again and again I got a little bit ticked off by the rail road plot that sent this poor woman down a pretty predictable decline into actual madness, until it reached its rather disappointing ending.
Still, I don't want to put anyone off as I did actually enjoy this film, but more for the good performances than the plot, which turns the NHS into some sort of ghastly monolithic institution very far away from reality.