Last night we watched Girl, Interrupted, from 1999. Man, this is just a showcase for how truly talented and nuanced Winona Ryder is as an actor. She's really something else. It makes me feel like most of her roles were not enough to show how good she truly is. She really reminds me of Sean Penn, vulnerable and questioning in all the right ways, while still being able to be cooler and smarter than anyone in the room. Truly a great rebel and tremendous talent.
The director, James Mangold, was also great. He was able to play the actors off one another so well; you could feel the relationships tangibly. This was made right after he made Copland, so I shouldn't be surprised at how much I loved it.
Angelina Jolie was interesting in this. I thought she was a little heavy handed in her performance, but not bad at all. I thought she was really working though, and found a way to play someone completely pushing all the rules. But what bothered mean little is that, it felt so unflinchingly over the top, she couldn've been scaled back a hair by the director. But my wife said she's known girls just like that, that she actually did a great job.
Apparently this film departs in major ways from what happened in real life, and the author hated it, but I haven't read the book, so if I judge it on its own, I thought it truly was a tremendous and visceral work of great cinema, due to the central pillars of a once in a lifetime talent actor, an intelligent, competent, and refined director, and (flights of fiction notwithstanding) a well written script.
I'm so glad I didn't skip over this one.
