My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper

I was recently conversing in an Internet chat room, and another chatter mentioned that they had seen a very good film at the cinema in America, called My Sister's Keeper. I did an Amazon UK Internet search on the film title, but the film that was available for sale on the Amazon web site, with the same title, was not the same film as the other chatter mentioned. Anyway, I checked out the film available on the Amazon UK web site, read the review, and it looked very interesting, and so I bought it. For anyone wanting to buy the film, it might be useful to know, that it stars Kathy Bates, and Lynn Redgrave, and again, is called My Sister's Keeper.

The film is about a psychiatric diagnosed, schizo-affective child, called Christine, who's father dies when she was a child, and who grows up in and out of psychiatric hospitals, due to negative hearing voices, noisy hallucinations, and non-communicative social withdrawal, but who otherwise lived with, and was looked after, by her single mother. Christine was also shown to suffer from some visual hallucinations.

The noisy hallucinations Christine experienced, triggered by environmental noise and stress, were depicted as meaningless and incoherent, when they are usually not experienced primarily over actual hearing voices - which are also caused or triggered by environmental noise and stress - and it is not the case that noisy hallucinations are completely meaningless and incoherent either. Usually, hearing negative voices, are experienced first, then the chaotic noises and/or visual hallucinations follow, but in relation or context to the negative voices, the incoherent noises and images can have some meanings to them as well, related to the persons life-experiences.

As a teenager, Christine's anger at the futility and injustice of war and fanatical militarism, under the Nixon regime, was seen as inappropriate anger, and not being able to relate to the real world, by her mother. When her mother dies, when Christine is an adult, this brings her closer to her successful younger sister, who she begins to form a friendship relationship with.

Whilst the negative hearing voices and hallucinations, Christine suffered from, were otherwise depicted quite well, and the film showed that she had a vulnerability to environmental stress, I felt that she was somewhat of a stereotype of a psychiatric diagnosed person, with the usual prejudices that we are very bad communicators, and have problems forming human relationships because of this.

Christine made her own statements, and a lot of the time, her statements seemed disconnected, and she did not connect, respond, or reciprocate to anything, in a flow or stream of conversation, that was said to her. When she did connect and respond to another person's statement, she then went off on a tangent, mentioning something completely different or "out of context". I commented on this, and my dad's partner, accurately pointed out, that it seemed that nobody actually connected, responded, or reciprocated to her statements, however seemingly disconnected or unconnected.

At one point in the film, Christine expresses herself playfully, towards a young black child, and was able to reciprocate and connect, because he did not respond silently, or judge her seemingly fragmented and disconnected behaviours and statements, as her mother did. Christine's expressiveness and elation, was merely seen as outgoing friendliness and playfulness by the child, of whom she was kind towards and befriended.

It was a good film, but it didn't really seem to have much of an ending, and like most of these films about diagnosed madness, it purported the view that all diagnosed madness is mostly due to a chemical imbalance. The view that diagnosed madness, is caused by childhood abuse, loss, and trauma, was mostly mocked and discredited in the film, and the view that it is caused by oppression from others, and falsity of self, was also satirised and rejected, and interpreted in a way, that others are expected to tolerate unreasonable, or irrational, expression and communication.