STRANGE VOICES

US, 1987, 92 minutes, Colour.
Valerie Harper, Nancy Mc Keown, Stephen Macht, Millie Perkins.
Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman.

Strange Voices is an American telemovie that focuses on mental illness. It is in the vein of so many films which dramatise illnesses, both physical and mental, and make available information to the wide television audience as well as help them identify with characters and understand and appreciate the suffering.

Nancy McKeon? is effective as Nicole, the architecture student who hears voices and whose schizophrenic experience is devastating for her life and for her family. Her sympathetic mother is played by Valerie Harper and her sceptical father who wants to avoid issues is played effectively by Steven Macht. Millie Perkins appears in a guest role as a sympathetic neighbour who falls foul of prejudice.

The film offers a typical American family and invites audiences to identify with the characters and their experiences.

1. Interesting telemovie? Dramatisation of mental illness? Helping the television audience to understand and appreciate?

2. The background of the American family, affluent, lifestyle at home, work, study? Medical help, hospitals? College and campuses? Audiences identifying with this atmosphere? Musical score?

3. The title, the focus on schizophrenia? Audience understanding of the mental condition? The mental states, the hearing of voices, the debilitating effect? Physical consequences? Medication and side effects? Empathy for the schizophrenic?

4. Nicole, her happy home life, studying architecture and her skill? Relationship with her parents, with Lisa? The socials at home? Her return to college, her boyfriend, the voices? Her misinterpretation of behaviour and her angry outbursts? Behaviour in class, driving? Her going home, bewildered? The voices, the computer? Her destruction of property? Going to the party, her violent outburst? The doctors and treatment? Drugs and her becoming debilitated? Her mother's support, her sisters' angers, her father backing out of the situation? Her not wanting to be ill? The attempt to go back to college, her being lost on the campus? Hospitalised? At home? The growing bewilderment? The family having to support her? Her mother and the exasperation, yet her continued presence? Her sister and her coming to terms with the situation, her own fears? The father and his support? Nicole's future?

5. Lyn and Dave, the average married couple, their home life, work, the community? Lyn and her involvement, friends? Helen - and falling out because of the invitation to the wedding? Dave and his work, reluctant to face the truth, his anger with the doctors? His not coming home? Lyn and Dave and their clashes, her appeals to him? His hard line to the doctors? Gradually coming to understand, wanting the daughter institutionalised, wanting her better? Lyn unable to carry the burden? Their having to come to terms with their daughter's illness?

6. Lisa, relationship with her sister, support? Her fears and angers? Not taking the scholarship? Nancy's fear of being schizophrenic?

7. The boyfriend, her girlfriend, their support of her, the bewilderment, her outbursts? Their trying to understand, welcome her back to college?

8. The community, reputation, the family wanting to keep the situation quiet? Nicole's outbursts in the street, at the party, destruction?

9. The doctors, diagnoses, medication? Institutions and care for schizophrenics? Long-term hope?

10. The importance of this kind of film for dramatising mental illness? The need for audiences to understand, to break down ignorance and prejudice?