Recommended is the first word that suggests itself for this review.
It can be recommended for younger audiences, high school age audiences, especially, who can identify with the central characters. They have limited experience of mental illnesses but may well have experienced them in fellow students. This is an opportunity for some understanding and some tolerance.
It can be recommended for older audiences, especially parents and grandparents, for teachers and those involved in youth education. They will have had much more experience of mental illness but this is an opportunity to see it dramatised within the space of two hours.
One of the advantages of the film is that it has a very well-written screenplay, intelligent and articulate, with a great deal of sadness, but also with some humour.
Young actor, Charlie Plummer, brings the central character, Adam, to vivid life. Adam is still at high school. His father has walked out. His mother, Beth (Molly Parker), is absolutely devoted to him, taking him to doctors and psychiatrists, eager to find the right medication and program, perhaps over-eager in her love and care. Many times, Adam finds this smothering. The screenplay alerts audiences to prescriptions, medical programs, side effects, the dangers of not following the regime.
The film uses visual devices to indicate Adam’s schizophrenia and its effect on him. In various episodes, the images are blurred, sometimes a black pervasive smoke, distortions of people around him. For the voices that he hears, they are embodied in three characters, Joaquin, a fellow off-hand teenager, Rebecca, a sympathetic young woman, and a Bodyguard, tough and fierce, with some associates. Adam also hears voices from open doors. And, as for the title, it appears towards the end in a frightening hallucination of so many words of graffiti on the toilet walls.
Adam is very frank about his schizophrenia. He is filmed, direct to camera, explaining himself and his experiences to a psychiatrist. At school he has an episode and burns the arm of a fellow student, and is expelled. Interestingly, for a Catholic audience, while he is not a Catholic, Adam is enrolled in a Catholic school, St Agatha’s, the principal, Sister Catherine (Beth Grant) rather strict but prepared to make allowances for him. There is quite an amount of Catholic imagery around the school, statue of the Sacred Heart, images in the Chapel.
The Catholic theme is emphasised in the introduction of the character of Fr. Patrick played by Andy Garcia. Adam wanders into the Chapel, goes into the confessional, unfamiliar with what happens, but finding a very sympathetic priest who is able to listen, use common sense, is not judgemental, offers a range of Scripture texts (which Adam is not enthusiastic about), explains the nature of the confessional and how acknowledging one’s limitations and faults can be liberating. (If only all the clergy had the genial characteristics of Fr. Patrick!).
The other character that Adam encounters is fellow classmate, Maya (Taylor Russell). She is a very self-assured young woman (for those familiar with the Myers-Briggs Indicator, she is a surprising example of a ENTJ). She has a system going where she writes essays for fellow students. But, Adam is smitten, asks her to be his tutor. The relationship between Adam and Maya is sensitively portrayed, hardships, warmth, to love.
There is a further complication at home when Paul (Walton Goggins) moves in with Beth and she becomes pregnant. Adam is hostile to Paul – although, ultimately, Adam has completely misjudged him. (There is a quietly moving moment at the end when Adam is hearing voices and Paul quietly moves to close the door to stop the voices.)
Words on Bathroom Walls is sensitively directed by Thor Freudenthal (who had previously directed rather slight films and comedies). The performances make quite an impact. The screenplay is able to communicate some of the aspects of schizophrenia, the episodes, the effect on the schizophrenic, misinterpretation and bullying by those who do not understand. And, as has been said at the beginning, recommended.
US, 2020, 110 minutes, Colour.
Charlie Plummer, Taylor Russell, Molly Parker, Walton Goggins, Andy Garcia, Anna Sophie Robb, Beth Grant, Lobo Sebastian.
Directed by Thor Freudenthal.
Reviewed by Fr. Peter Malone, MSC
More info: wikipedia
Worth Pondering... 