mental health
Whenever I watch a Nicholas Cage movie I feel myself expecting to see a certain eccentricity in his performance. His over the top outbursts or erratic body movements distance away from more serious tones and instead cross over into that of slapstick comedy. Cage’s acting has always entertained me, yet my ironic enjoyment often makes it hard to take his characters seriously.
The subject of mental illness and disorders are interesting, educational, and sometimes sensitive topics in film. From watching movies like Girl, Interrupted, The Road Within and The Machinist, audiences learn a great deal about very real and problematic issues surrounding sufferers, however, can it be said that these representations are portrayed correctly? The film industry is guilty of depicting disorders such as hysteria as an illness that only women suffer from, and autism is far too often painted as a superpower, not to mention the unclear representation of schizophrenia, which causes audiences to confuse the illness with dissociative identity disorder.
It’s been quite some time since my last volume of Words vs. Moving Pictures, in which I discussed Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and compared it to the 1962 film. Since then, it has taken me a long time to try to find another book and subsequent movie adaptation that would be worthy of discussion.
Two years after his ex-wife disappeared, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) get an invitation to a dinner party his ex-wife is throwing out of the blue. The couple is hesitant, the invitation is too elaborately fancy, and it all feels slightly off, especially after such a long time of complete silence. On their way to the party, they hit a coyote, which Will kills out of mercy.