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©
Miramax.All Rights Reserved.
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Miramax.All Rights Reserved
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Miramax.All Rights Reserved.
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"These
are the failures of the world."
"That’s not true. No one’s a success or failure in life."
Oscar Wilde wrote that life is too important to be taken seriously. This does not mean
that life should be trivialized. To the contrary: Comedy, as an example of an expressive
form of story telling, is often more successful than drama in exploring important issues
because the weight of a matter can be so troubling or tedious that one can be overwhelmed
by the heaviness of the subject or just plain bored. This doesn’t mean that comedy
has to make light of the issues or belittle those who are struggling with them. Instead,
comedy, when successfully dealing with a serious matter, allows us to look more closely at
it without getting turned off or overwhelmed.
Cosi involves mental patients and takes place in a mental hospital in Australia. As a
clinical psychologist I have seen thousands of patients in psychiatric facilities over the
years, and I can say with some authority that, while there is no place quite like the
hospital portrayed in this film (at least not in my neck of the woods), the patients and
staff as presented are not too different from many real mental health patients and
hospital workers. As a comedy, Cosi does not cause us to laugh at the patients: It makes
us laugh at all the people, some who happen to be patients. What often makes this film
funny and at moments sincere are the little stories and pathos of life that each character
represents. There is much in Cosi that is honest and revealing about relationships and the
pains and struggles of life and how painful realities can burden us to the point where our
ability to function is impaired.
The hospital and its patients are seen from the point of view of an outsider, Lewis, a
young, aspiring stage director, who is hired to direct a play to be put on by the
hospital’s patients. Once on the job, Lewis is almost instantly overwhelmed and
browbeaten into submission by a manicy and determined patient, Roy, who wants to do
the Mozart opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. Roy’s fanatical obsessive desire to put on
this play is neither matched by the hospital’s resources nor the talent available. It
is Roy who selects from an audition, the six patients who will be in the play, six
individuals who seem to be chosen by whim or favoritism with no regard for ability or
potential.
In attempting to prepare the play, the lives of Lewis, his girlfriend Lucy, and his best
friend Nick, are drawn in with the lives of the patients. In the process the distinction
between patients and "normals" becomes less and less evident. The people outside
the wall seem as "crazy" as those inside. The truth is that the distinction is
really artificial because many of those inside are not crazy (while many people outside
are, in the loose sense of the word). Being a patient defines a role not a state of being.
By that I mean when I, as a doctor, sit down with a person who’s my patient, these
titles indicate our functions. We are still two people, one with the problem, the other
with skills to treat the one with the problem. Because the person is being treated by me,
a clinical psychologist, he is considered by some (probably many) to be a mental
patient. If I were a dentist and the person saw me for a toothache, I don’t think
that the person himself or others would label him a dental patient.
One of the realities and risks of being a mental health patient is that by being so
labeled one is lumped together with others of the same designation, as if the label makes
them more like other patients and different from those who are not patients (especially
their "healthy" family members). This is a troubling reality. Over the years I
have seen too many people become so conditioned to being patients that they think of
themselves as mental patients, not as people. The result is a lowering of self esteem and
a narrowing of their potential and independence. This is a self-view that is often
promoted by hospital staff and society. In Cosi there are some folks who are pretty
disturbed and others who are struggling with personal tragedies or addictions but are in
some ways more healthy than many of the "normals." This is a common reality in
mental hospitals. Even the patients with peculiar traits or eccentricities can be so
identified with these qualities that their humanity is overlooked. When you really look at
Roy, the patient who drives the others to enact Cosi, you see that despite his
peculiarities this is a man with real sensitivities and joy for life. His dream to put on
the opera is realized because of his determination. The result is an affirmation and
triumph for those who participated in the production.
The other patients involved in the play are each unique individuals with their own
personalities and issues. Doug is an angry young man. A fire starter with a twisted view
of the world, he is the only one of the six who appears psychotic and in need of being in
a closed, structured environment. Henry, who has dropped out of the world, is by
profession an attorney, but one whose perfectionism and obsessiveness at times cause him
to be immobile, unable to complete a task. Cherry is a feisty, combative woman whose
emotions often run rampant. She is the one who does things that most of us at times would
secretly like to do but never follow through, even admitting the desire, because we have
better control and are aware of the consequences. Ruth is a person who is the opposite of
Cherry. Abandoned by her husband, she has bottled her anguish and is so shut down that she
is incapable of spontaneous expression or gesture. She is like many people, often called
the walking wounded, who carry so much an emotional weight that they sink into depression
and become disconnected from what they’re feeling.
The sixth patient is Julie, a drug addict who is in the hospital because her therapist
says that "drugs are the symptom not the cause." She is the outsider of the
group and usually stays in the background drawing little attention to herself. This is
probably the same position she maintained outside the hospital: The observer and private
person who is difficult to read or to figure out. Drugs have probably been her escape from
an environment she does not find comfortable nor one in which she believes she fits.
Each of the patients needs help with their psychological conditions and their issues.
There is a reason they are in treatment. What they do not need is to be denied their
humanities or treated with less regard because of their mental states (something which the
head of occupational therapy does in this movie).
Finally, what Lewis and the patients go through to stage Cosi may be seen stranger
than it actually is. The experience is not that far removed from reality. In the real
world, putting on a play or making a movie is a process characterized with much of the
same kinds of chaos, set backs, crises, and personality conflicts as seen in Cosi. This is
also true with any complex project on which a number of people must work together. How
many of us cannot say that we have at least once gotten involved with a group project in
which things happened that were absurd or off the wall?
Available from Buena Vista Home Video
Rated R by M.P.A.A.
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©
Miramax.All Rights Reserved.
©
Miramax.All Rights Reserved.
©
Miramax.All Rights Reserved.
©
Miramax.All Rights Reserved
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