It doesn’t mention what kind of institution its inmates are rebelling against. Werner Herzog’s controversial picture is largely set inside the confines of an institution that’s situated in a small island town with a barren landscape. Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) | Werner Herzog But, the film does brood over the topics of fantasy, imagination, and the boredom of harsh reality.Ģ3. The film is a light-hearted portrayal of a state asylum and the film’s direction or pacing has nothing much to offer. The young man’s ‘erotomania’ is assigned to be treated by distinguished psychiatrist Jack Mickler (Brando), who is in the process of reviving his own dispirited marriage. Related to Mental Asylum Movies: Dead Man (1995): Poetry of the Sinners His magnetic eyes and steamy words make some women believe that, including the nurses at the psychiatric institution he has been committed to (“Have you ever loved a woman until milk leaked from her” asks Don). In Jeremy Leven’s oddball fantasy, Johnny Depp plays a delusional young man, who is convinced that he is the world’s greatest lover, Don Juan. The acting and production design, based on Hogarth’s paintings, lends an authentic atmosphere, which has inspired countless movies of the era, dealing with similar themes.Ģ4. The film isn’t devoid of conventional Hollywood elements, but it is several cuts above the typical horror films of the decade. Related to Mental Asylum Movies: The Nightmare in Cinema But, the sadistic Sims (Boris Karloff), running the asylum commits the girl into the institution on a trumped-up charge. Mark Robson’s horror thriller tracks the experiences of a spirited, young girl Nell’s (Anna Lee) efforts to expose the cruelty & reform ‘bedlam’. One of 18 th century England’s greatest shame was the insane asylum, commonly referred to by Londoners as ‘Bedlam’.
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If that’s the case, please educate me in the comments. Despite my best efforts, I must have missed out including some hidden gems that explores this subject. Finally, it’s well-known that lists are subjective. Titicut Follies (1967), Warrendale (1967), Boy Interrupted (2009), and ‘Til Madness Do Us Part are some of the must-see documentaries that raises lot of questions not just about mental health, but about the human race as a whole. But there are plenty of documentaries on the subject which most often does a better job than its fictional counterpart. The list doesn’t include any documentaries. But the movies still has a long way to go from its ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. It’s psychiatric care facilities or psychiatric institutions now. Some of it are painfully cliched, but as I mentioned earlier it’s all a kind of documentation of the evolving human perception on mental health. The genre of films included in the list varies from dark comedy, drama, horror, mystery, and thriller.
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Related to Mental Asylum Films: 12 Films That Explore Mental Illness But, films on this list explore how the stringent and the humane approaches within psychiatric institutions have further afflicted and helped the vulnerable individuals respectively. Caligari” (1920) the traumatized, weird world of Fenix in Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre” (1989) or that soul-sucking psychiatric hospital dance party sequence in Refn’s “Bronson” (2008)?įilms are also guilty of reducing mentally afflicted individuals, placed in the institutions as ‘comical caricatures’. Who can forget the somber surroundings in the opening sequence of the expressionist masterpiece “The Cabinet of Dr. Most often the movies considered psychiatric institutions as a perfect setting to terrify the audiences. The screen has often shown us the ‘asylum inmates’ drugged into catatonic states. For a long time, cinema has provided haunting and disturbing imagery on mental health distress and treatment methods with the caretakers behaving as ‘lion tamers’. It’s important to challenge the stigma and discrimination, to equip ourselves with relevant knowledge, and be humane.Ĭinema does illustrate how the ideas on mental health disorders have evolved over the decades. But the conversations on mental health problems are changing for the better. The stigma surrounding mental illness is still there.
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The increased awareness about mental health disorders has led to more humane treatment methods. A place to lock those deemed mentally ill, and the keys were thrown away The ‘asylums’ were the epicenters of psychiatric abuse even till the 1960s and 1970s.
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The de-humanizing & intimidating images of mental asylum are hard to erase from our collective consciousness. Moreover, the word mental asylum (or psychiatric institution) is another morally grey area. But when it comes to understanding mental health problems, there’s still lot of grey areas. Now there are plenty of terminologies, mental health diagnosis, and treatment options.