I am really impressed with the class's ability to discuss similarities and differences between The Quiet Room and various films students self-selected (including Girl, Interrupted; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Silver Linings Playbook, etc.). My students are talking about character motivations, actions, personalities, relationships, struggles, and choices. They are also sharing a lot of insight into the reasons for mental illness stigmas and stereotypes.
As I am grading their essays in response to the assignment to compare/contrast Schiller's book with a film (or to "The Yellow Wallpaper" if a film is not available), I find myself going back to the text of The Quiet Room, looking at specific passages and considering Lori's illness and how it developed in her life as a teenager and into her twenties and thirties. I am thinking also about the people I know who have mental illness and how their diseases changed over time, in most cases getting worse unless treatment (medical, psycholocial, social) was sought and followed consistently.
I know, too, that one of the movies that I watched on Lifetime, called Obsessed (2002) which starred Jenna Elfman, was a film that I believe could be compared easily to The Quiet Room. This film, which was based on a true story about a woman named Diane Schaefer, who was obsessed with a cancer specialist Brennan Murray, features a character named Ellena Roberts, who imagined a relationship with a doctor and who had a hallucination about a woman named Charlotte who seemed to be her friend. Even though the movie was not about schizophrenia (but erotomania), the fact that Ellena frequently interacted with a hallucination and was not aware of the reality in which she lived made me think of Lori's discussions of her visions and Voices.
Thanks -
Kia Jane
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325322/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm#cast
http://www.examiner.com/article/obsessed-true-story-based-on-diane-schaefer-dr-murray-brennen-erotomania-case
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