Movies about insanity are as varied and different as movies about love, yet it is rare that a story or film dwells on what it is like to be in love with someone suffering from mental illness. Is it not true that the people who suffer the most from mental illness are those innocent bystanders who care about the mentally ill? John Cassavetes deals directly with this truism in his hard-hitting drama, “A Woman Under the Influence”.
Boasting one of the greatest performances by an actress ever seen, Cassavetes’ movie is set within a seemingly regular working-class family in Los Angeles. The film opens with a normal looking scene of a homemaker named Mabel (Gena Rowlands in that aforementioned performance), sending off her three small children to an overnight stay with her mother. The children seem very well-behaved and the grandmother very caring. Mabel also appears in this opening scene as pretty normal, as she worries about details and demands to be informed about any irregularities that may occur during her children’s absence. In this opening scene, Mabel still seems a bit neurotic, which is a hint as to what and who she truly is. The children are sent away because Mabel and her husband Nick (Peter Falk in a role that fits him like a glove) want to have a romantic evening together. Nick, who is a foreman for a construction team, is forced that night to work due to a water leak at the construction site, causing their plans to fall through. This, it seems, is a trigger for another (it appears that there were many in the past) psychotic lapse for Mabel, who ends up picking a man up at a bar that evening. Yet this is not a story of infidelity. For Nick, if only it was that simple. Mable’s descent into madness quickly ascends within the next day and night until Nick is forced to commit her to an institution. This is the first half of the movie. The 2nd half concerns her return from the institution six months later as the very same person she was when she went in.
Mabel has a hard time controlling her thoughts, and an even harder time understanding them. She is OK when alone but is so petrified about not knowing how to behave, that she becomes unglued when accompanied by many people. If this is true, then why does her husband Nick, who loves her deeply, keep inviting large amounts of people to the house? My guess is that he is afraid of being alone with her and is constantly looking for support for his difficulties, which are quite substantial.
The people who suffer the most from mental illness are the immediate family who live through the irrationality that is the insane. Of all those who suffer from Mabel, it is only Nick who chose this life. The others, being Mabel’s parents, Nick’s parents and the three children were thrust into the predicament through fate. By choosing to fall in love with Mabel, Nick chose to suffer through their lives together. Only love can be a strong enough motivator to make anyone chose this type of life. For all her irrationalities, Mabel has something that is sweet and tender and one of the successes of the film is its ability to allow me to see this. To care for not only all the immediate family suffering but also for Mabel.
One of the fascinating aspects of all of Cassavetes’ films, is the feeling that you are watching a reality show with real people going through issues. I never felt while watching the movie that I was watching a play. Cassavetes wrote the script for the movie, while allowing his actors the freedom to enhance and act on the script as they felt. While not true improvisation, this style becomes a hybrid of the acted written word and free-flowing dialogue. When added to stunning performances all around, this method results in a powerful viewing experience. I was riveted to my seat throughout the movie, but I also had a feeling of hopelessness to the unchangeable situation, which is the mostly incurable disease that is mental illness. When Mabel returns from the institution, we are told that she went through intolerable ignorant treatments, such as shock treatments and mind-numbing medication. The fact that she returns from her six months absence the same person with the same illness is illuminating.
Gena Rowlands, who is the real Mrs. Cassavetes gives an unforgettable performance as Mabel. She moves from calm to blusterous at a moment’s notice and by the film’s end I felt I knew what she was feeling. This is a woman who wants nothing more than to be good and accepted, yet her sickness does not allow this and, on realizing this, she is constantly in a state of fright. As a mother, she treats her kids like her friends and, in so doing, leaves them at dangerous unprotected levels of dependency. Her love for them is not less than any other loving mother’s love for her children, but the expression of this love veers from care to fear to despair. Rowlands will sometimes, in one scene, show all these emotions, and she does not do this by over-the-top showboating that another lesser actor would revert to. It is all done through her facial expressions and physical body language. At one point, she looks adorably gorgeous, while, in others, ugly and deranged. None of these transformations occur through make-up or lighting, rather through pure acting. Cassavetes films her like a documentarian using handheld kinetic camera styles and his camera follows her in a free-form manner that adds insight to her erratic actions.
Peter Falk, who at the time of the making of the movie was a major TV star as the disheveled detective Columbo, shows his true range in the role of Nick. His Nick is not stupid, and he truly understands who his wife is. He also deeply loves her, and I was not sure if he would love her if she was sane. Part of her attraction to him is her off-kilter, erratic behavior. Nick is also a bit neurotic, and I believe he needs her cracked behavior to justify his own off-the-cuff energy. We know, and he knows that Mabel has no self-control when surrounded by people, yet he invited his entire work crew to eat a spaghetti breakfast at his home, after his romantic evening with her was canceled. Surely, he did not expect her to behave in an acceptable manner. In another scene, after committing their mother, he takes his kids out of school to spend a forced fun day on the beach during the late fall or winter, and then feeds them beer on the way home. At that point, I felt that the only thing keeping Nick from himself going over the edge was his love and protective need of Mabel.
The supporting characters in the movie are no less relevant with both set of parents showing two different viewpoints towards Mabel and her actions. Her parents are petrified of her, and too scared to respond in any way other than sadness and acquiescence. Nick’s parents, or more specifically his mother, are angry at Mabel and blame her for ruining her son’s life. These are both two very insightful and realistic depictions of people in their situation. Their inclusion into the story adds depth and meaning to the film.
The movie ends with a quiet functional view on how the couple work together within their unorthodox lifestyle and perfectly enhanced for me those themes inherent throughout the film. Love is a strong emotion that pulls humans through everything. I did not feel sorry for either Nick or Mabel by the film’s end. I admired their love and their love gave me a bit more meaning as to what constitutes life. For a movie to have this effect on me shows how great a motion picture it truly is.
1001 Movies before you die 