Glen and Krin Gabbard’s "Psychiatry and the Cinema" describes our discipline’s considerable value for screenwriters. The Gabbards cite the term "ficelle," first used by Henry James in discussing narrative devices. A ficelle is the system of strings used to control a marionette.
According to the Gabbards, the celluloid practitioner often serves as an admirable ficelle – enabling exposition via flashbacks to recent or remote events ("Tell me more about your bar mitzvah ..."); eliciting sensational revelations about emotional trauma; illuminating motivation, and so on. In return, Hollywood’s contribution to the understanding of mental illness and its treatment has been meager. More often than not, movies serve up distortions and trivializations about our work.
Steven Soderbergh’s “Side Effects” is the 26th picture in an artistically accomplished and lucrative career. His works range across nearly every genre from science fiction (“Solaris,” 2002) to the caper film ("Ocean’s Eleven,” 2001). He’s directed exemplary “indie” movies like “sex, lies, and videotape,” (1989) as well as box office hits like “Erin Brockovich”(2000). Bafflingly, "Side Effects" is a toss-away turkey. It owns the dubious distinction of cramming the greatest number of misrepresentations about our work and ourselves into a single movie. Some of these are merely risible, others potentially hurtful – of which more presently.
A thin screenplay is cribbed from thrillers with gonzo therapists – for example, "Dressed to Kill" (1980), "Basic Instinct" (1992), and "Final Analysis" (1992) – as well as the "black widow" crime subgenre. [Spoiler Alert!] Dedicated, compassionate Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) undertakes outpatient treatment of Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), after a suicide attempt that brought her to the hospital ER, where he’s a consultation/liaison psychiatrist. Several years ago, her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), was convicted of Wall Street insider trading. Martin’s recent return from prison apparently has exacerbated the devastating depression brought on by the loss of her husband, unborn child, and affluent suburban lifestyle. Crippling side effects from a first round of the usual suspect drugs leads Banks to prescribe a new antidepressant, Ablixa. It’s been recommended by Emily’s former Connecticut psychiatrist, Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). The drug provokes a mild episode of somnambulism, but Banks continues it because Emily is improving.
A few days later, she slashes her husband to death during another bout of sleepwalking, awakening with no memory for the murder. Dr. Banks, a perennial multitasker, turns out to be a respected forensic psychiatrist. His testimony in that capacity gets Emily declared incapable of participating in her defense "by reason of insanity," and committed to an inpatient facility until deemed competent to stand trial.
As a result of the hailstorm of publicity surrounding the case, Dr. Banks’s life begins to unravel. He’s blamed for prescribing Ablixa, fired by his patients, shunned by his colleagues, threatened with losing his license. His marriage lies in ruins. Broke but not broken, Banks begins to smell more than one rat. He winkles out a conspiracy between Emily and Dr. Siebert – it’s as full of holes as John Dillinger’s corpse. Emily seduced Dr. Siebert. It’s unclear whether she came to Dr. Siebert for help, and intuited the latter’s latent lesbian yearnings and criminality, or planned to corrupt her from the start (my read). The smitten Dr. Siebert taught her to how to mime depression, while giving a short course in psychopathic psychopharmacology. Thus, Emily never took Ablixa, or anything else; faked her suicide; chivvied Dr. Banks into treating her; and slew her husband.
Figuring the value of the Big Pharma company manufacturing Ablixa would plunge in the wake of Martin’s death, Emily and Dr. Siebert scored immense profit by shorting Ablixa. (Emily arguably took a tip from her husband’s criminal market tampering to engineer her own insider fraud). Dr. Banks was cold-bloodedly selected because of his impeccable credentials and forensic clout, under the assumption he would find her incompetent, then push for her acquittal once she was "cured" of her phony major depressive disorder. Emily is now Dr. Banks’s only patient. At first, one cannot ascertain whether he’s only a visitor to the hospital where she’s confined or is consulting with ward therapists. By the end, he’s totally in charge of her care and fate.
One wonders if his job description mutated according to script changes dictated by the director and/or whichever writer was on board the project at whatever time. (Using multiple script writers is common in the industry, particularly in mainstream filmmaking: One of my patients was hired and fired from a production six times.) Dr. Banks compels Emily to confess to the murder by a devious combination of guile and threats. He cons her into thinking Dr. Siebert has secretly paid off his cooperation, because he’s ferreted out the deadly duo’s con. While she’s reasonably certain that that Dr. Banks has been bribed into enabling her release, admitting her guilt to him wouldn’t be a problem in any case: Once acquitted, she cannot be tried again. A murderer invoking double jeopardy is a bromide of crime film and fiction. Dr. Banks entices Emily into entrapping Dr. Siebert into making whoopie at her office. The latter is promptly arrested for professional misconduct, financial fraud, and as an accessory to Martin’s death. In a move typical of film noir, Dr. Banks abruptly turns the tables on Emily (think Sam Spade "sending over" spider lady Brigid O’Shaughnessy to prison and possible execution in "The Maltese Falcon"). Dr. Banks declares Emily is far sicker than he first imagined, summarily orders her communication with the outside world severed, and prescribes a massive cocktail of psychotropics that will keep her indefinitely hospitalized and zombified. His professional and personal happiness is restored in an eye blink.