May 26, 2004

Remote "Control"

Reeling around: "People Say I'm Crazy"

A remarkable movie about being crazy, from someone who should know.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Mental illness, without the "Beautiful Mind" glamour

Amid all the exciting documentaries of the season, I'm afraid that John and Katie Cadigan's memorable little film, "People Say I'm Crazy," has gotten lost. That's really too bad; I've never seen anything quite like it, and if it doesn't make you cry two or three times, you need a heart transplant. John Cadigan, now in his early 30s (he looks much older), is an artist who has battled a severe psychotic illness since his undergraduate years. With the help of his sister Katie (an experienced filmmaker), he made this movie in an effort to capture mental illness from the inside.

There are no glamorous "Beautiful Mind"-style effects in "People Say I'm Crazy," just a journey through the looking glass into the world of the borderline-functional mentally ill. Cadigan and most of his friends are those slightly funny-looking people we tolerate in coffee shops but generally don't look at -- people who struggle every day to quell voices, combat paranoid delusions and deal with the effects of mind-numbing medications that can lead to catatonia and obesity. While the Cadigans' film is relatively artless, you'll never forget it. John Cadigan's heartbreaking baby steps back toward "normalcy," and his attempt to communicate with us, epitomize those virtues Hollywood films are supposed to demonstrate but never do: honesty, courage, family love, the miraculous resilience of the human spirit.