What is reality?
For many of us, that’s not a hard question to answer, but for Jack (Jason Wiechert) and Sarah (Cassandra Clark), a couple whose lives are affected by schizophrenia, it’s not so easy. Jack has ceased his medication and is starting to lose the boundaries between reality and imagination. But the real answer is one that no one suspects.
Content
The overall storlyline was very well told and engrossing, with good acting from the main characters. The ending worked well tied things together. (More on that later.)
With that said, there are some issues in presentation of mental illness in this film. There were a couple shots of both Jack and Sarah in the hospital in straightjackets. While this is a good way of depicting the subject in a hospital or even their own insanity, it is a little bit prejudicial as straightjackets are almost never used anymore, and mental hospitals no longer treat their inhabitants like the “crazies” in From Hell or Sweeney Todd. Also, there is a scene in which Jack is seen talking to his reflection in the mirror – the scene is very nicely done, with the reflection’s arms folded across his chest, while Jack’s remain to his side. It’s an interesting choice, most likely intended to show Jack’s paranoia and odd mental state, but once again I was a bit concerned that certain people might get the wrong impression.
Warning – spoilers ahead!!
Throughout the film, there are many references to Jack’s schizophrenia. Sarah asks him how he knows if the people he sees are real or not, Jack makes mention of paranoia and the sense that someone is going to kill him, plus the two go together to see Jack’s psychiatrist. The film also makes multiple hints at the possibility that Sarah may just be a product of Jack’s imagination, similar to that of Bruce Willis’ character in the movie The Sixth Sense – Jack interacts with the psychiatrist, but Sarah doesn’t; and there is a phone message left by one of their family members, but whose name is never identified.
The real shocker, however, come at the end of the movie when Jack and Sarah show up at the psychiatrist’s office to find a staged intervention where the audience assumes that three of Jack’s family members are insisting that he needs to start taking his medication or return to the hospital. But the real twist comes when the psychiatrist actually hands the medication to Sarah and tells her that Jack is actually the unreal one - apparently Sarah created Jack out of grief over the death of her parents.
This sudden twist is a really good one – especially since the audience has likely been guessing all along that Sarah is a figment of Jack’s imagination, not the other way around. My only concern, however, is for those who might want a better explanation in regards to Sarah’s mental state. Since the character of Jack has schizophrenia, I found myself wondering if Sarah did too (and had projected it onto her imaginary boyfriend,) and was a little confused. Schizophrenia is usually genetic and tends to hit suddenly in a person’s twenties, rarely caused by grief or trauma. In addition, I was concerned that some viewers might take the wrong interpretation of schizophrenia – the perception that this disease causes multiple personalities, which is untrue – and that Sarah had created another personality in Jack, similar to the plot of Fight Club.
