Prozac Nation


The film was based on the Autobiographical novel “Prozac Nation, Young and Depressed in America”, is the story of a freshman at Harvard University on a journalism scholarship in the mid eighties that develops a severe manic/depressive disorder, inflamed by the problems in her life, and what she has to go through to get control of her disorder.

Prozac Nation was initially filmed in 2000, and was aired a few times overseas but only recently made it to the US on HBO in March, ’05 and then dvd in June, ‘05. The entire film is told from the perspective of the main character, Elizabeth Wurtzel (Christina Ricci), and it becomes obvious within the first half hour, that with that perspective comes a kind of filter that you only get to see what she thinks is important for you to see. You have to fill in the blanks. The main character only wants you to see what happens to her and what these people are doing to make her condition harder, and you can kind of see in the periphery something that she isn’t quite talking about. Something that would make her smell less than rosy. She wants you to like her and sympathize with her by telling you an obviously skewed version of her story. The problem is the end result comes across as hollow and fake. It was frustrating to watch, because you know you are only getting half of the story.

The movie has a stellar cast with a chance to showcase some of the best acting I have seen in their careers. Christina Ricci, Jessica Lange (as the mother who is dealing with Elizabeth Wurtzel’s condition), and Jason Biggs (as her boyfriend, trying to make sense of everything). Unfortunately, they were all playing pieces of roles that never seemed to add up to a whole character, because the narrator didn’t want you to see everything.

The movie is meant to be a cautionary tale, of the perils of manic depression and the overmedication of a society to “fix” it. The only problem is, the moral of the story is added as an afterthought at the end, with a voiceover from the main character and a placard announcing that 300 million prescriptions of Prozac are filled every year. The main character seems resentful that she is medicated to even herself out. That even though you have spent the last two hours being told all the horrible things that she is going through to get over her illness, the cure is worse than the illness. And that is when it becomes obvious what you aren’t being shown, how her illness affects everyone else. And the moral only fits the movie because she doesn’t care. Even in hindsight. Because everything that happens only affects her, and she is only comfortable thinking that her actions have no consequences. Sadly, the actual moral of the story was lost on the main character/author because she doesn’t seem to realize there was ever anything wrong with her.

On a scale of one to five stars, I give Prozac Nation 2 stars.
 

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