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DVD An Angel at My Table - Criterion Collection
Originally produced as a three-part miniseries for New Zealand television, this extraordinary film is based on the life of Janet Frame, an introverted, sensitive girl who was later misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and spent eight years in a psychiatric hospital. She would later become one of New Zealand's most celebrated poets and novelists, publishing her first books while she was still confined to a mental ward. She had endured over 200 electroshock treatments and had almost been lobotomized by careless physicians who took no time to understand that she was merely awkward and shy and suffered from little more than routine depression. From a solid screenplay by Laura Jones, director Jane Campion (The Piano) tells this story without soapy melodrama, but rather as an exploration of a challenged creative spirit--a journey into a writer's mind, exploring the power of imagination as a mechanism of survival and self-defense. Three talented actors play Janet Frame at different ages throughout the film, with Kerry Fox giving a powerful performance as the young-adult Janet, whose own skill and creative tenacity would prove to be her salvation. Frightening, harrowing, and ultimately a source of humanistic enlightenment, An Angel at My Table (titled after Frame's autobiography) is a film you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon
Review(s): DVD An Angel at My Table - Criterion Collection
Beautiful film
This movie is wonderfully filmed and has a heart wrenching story. I recommend it.
A Gun at My Temple....
This movie is, technically, a very good movie. Janet Frame's disturbing story deserves to be told, and Campion is the woman to tell it.
I gave it three stars because--by virtue of its subject--it is REALLY DEPRESSING. Do NOT watch this movie if you are feeling at all emotionally fragile or if you have had a bad day. Rent a musical instead. On the other hand, you could have a Lobotomy Film Festival and rent this and the movie FRANCES (and, for that matter, Frankenstein).
Janet Frame's story is a series of disturbing, painful, traumatic and scary events. It is compelling to watch her go through all of this, but then, instant replays of racetrack crashes are compelling, too.
Some possible sequel titles are: A Noose Around My Neck, A Razor at My Wrist, 500 Valium and a Glass of Water at My Bedside Table...you get my drift.
It is amazing that, despite all her challenges, Frame did follow her dream and became a well-known writer. So in that sense, it's inspiring. I wish I had been more familiar with her writing before I watched this movie, and actually, I will probably watch it again after I read some of her work.
Get to know a remarkable woman
This movie broke my heart in pieces the first time I saw it. I haven't been informed about Janet Frame's life before and this movie based on her autobiographies gave me the big picture that I find it too difficult to put it out of my mind.
Janet is lovely girl by all means, generous and caring to her friends, she has crooked teeth in her younger days but she was always an owner of a diamond heart. She was painfully shy too, and God knows how stupid people judged her as schizophrenic in the best days of her life. It was so scary to see stupid people diagnosing a genius as schizophrenic when it was them who should have been diagnosed like that. Anyways,they took eight years of her life, best part of her life in hospitals with real mentally ill people. It's a wonder how did she manage to stay sane in those circumstances but she did.
Today, Janet Frame is an old woman and I hope with all my heart that people will award her with a great world prize for the long eight years she spent in hospitals when nothing was wrong with her. She absolutely deserves some recognition as long as she's still alive.
She has written so many books apart from her autobiographies and I love her with all my heart for setting a great example to humanity that GOOD PEOPLE will ALWAYS TRIUMPH (un)fortunetaly in the long run that is.
A must see movie.
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