Mental Illness In Film

Many films have been made based around mental illness and a protagonist who has been disturbed. To make our opening a success, we will need to take inspirational from these films to make the narrative realistic and not disrespectful to people who are ill as we want the film to focus on the recovery of a patient. Here is a list of films that were based around this theme-

A 'Coming Of Age' film that features mental illness and disorders is Perks Of Being A Wallflower. The protagonist, Charlie,  shows symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety. He seems to also suffer from depression. He became mentally unstable as a result of being sexually abused as a child. This causes him to relive the abuse through flashbacks which come later in his life. Charlie. He tried to hide the issue and deny experiences such as his Aunt molesting him at age five, which caused him some serious trauma, especially as a young boy. Charlie blames a lot of problems on himself, and sees others of having absolutely no faults. He didn’t want to believe that he was a bad person and just wanted to make friends. The flashbacks increase later in the film. He felt helpless and kept blacking out. He had more flashbacks of memories he did not want to remember and kept persuading himself to believe a truth that doesn’t exist. 

After watching the film, we have decided to include a series of flashbacks to the event which caused our protagonist to become mentally ill. This will be to a car crash where the protagonist lost his father. This will create an enigma code to the audience as they will want to watch on to see if the character recovers. The flashbacks will be included by using a blurred effect so it looks connected to the rest of the opening, and not separate videos placed in.