A person who is too awake and self-conscious will not necessarily bring happiness. Frances Farmer is an example. She became famous at a young age for her independent thinking, and she became famous in Hollywood for her maverick temperament. But after that, personality no longer contributed to her life, instead, it became the reaction force of her destiny.
Hollywood has brought her fame and a glitzy life, but she doesn't value these. She thinks that Hollywood is her springboard and the assembly line for printing money. She is going to perform plays on Broadway, pursue art, and transform people's minds and ideas through art. social trend. Her angularity offended her boss and she fell out of favor in Hollywood. And when she found that the "artist" she admired told her to "be in despair, not perform despair", she was really disappointed when she just coveted her own body and bowed her waist for five buckets of rice. Hollywood wants her to go back to work, as stubborn as she certainly doesn't want to go back in shame and let others see jokes. If there was a God, or if she could preview her life and come back to the present to make a decision, I think even a proud woman would be more than happy to be able to return to the life of a movie star. Life was still kind to her so far, at least when she ran out of ammunition and food, it gave her another choice for food and clothing, and maybe even prosperity and wealth.
Returning to life in Hollywood again is not satisfactory, and the media are very happy to see all kinds of negative news about her. Her reckless personality makes her unable to stop constantly resisting, fighting back, and occasionally losing her mind. She is the pain in the ass in the eyes of her colleagues, and the talk of the public after dinner. In the end, she was regarded as a "crazy movie star" because of her ramming the police and attacking the makeup artist. You can't imagine how happy people are to see a famous person go crazy.
In order to save her from prison, and to "get back to normal" as soon as possible and get back on the "right track" in Hollywood, her mother sent her to a mental sanatorium. When her mother left, she begged her to take her home, but her mother left alone. At this time, she is also unimaginable. After a few years, home is no longer a place to live. She will resolutely rush out of the house and go to the psychiatrist who is waiting for her, even if she knows that she will never go again. Can't come back.
The most terrible thing in a mental hospital is not the various drugs and cruel treatment methods. The terrible thing is that the whole world thinks that your brain is wrong. Deranged mental state is more convinced. And the scariest thing is that you start to occasionally wonder "Am I really crazy?" And what's even scarier is that this kind of thinking occurs more and more frequently. By the time you think about this for a long time, you've really gone crazy. If Frances' character and words and deeds played a crucial role in the development of her life trajectory, then from the moment she stepped into the mental hospital, she has gradually lost her sovereignty over her life.
The smart Frances soon discovered that she had to compromise and cooperate. She tried to calm down and communicate with her mother and the attending doctor in a pleasant manner, but people's impression of her as a "mental patient" made her even the smallest and most normal mood swings. Considered a sign of "still in need of treatment". Her debacle reinforced misconceptions about her again, and she was forced to undergo even more brutal drug treatment. When Harry came to visit her, her physical condition was already very poor, and the powerlessness of her body made her have no time to think. Apart from lying in a drowsiness in the sunshine of the nursing home, waiting for the next round of drug bombing, she had no extra strength.
But maybe this is what people hope for? No talking back, no noise. Just fell asleep peacefully.
Harry took her out of the nursing home and wanted to marry her and take her away. Of course she loved Harry, but she decided to go home, she said she couldn't just leave without saying goodbye, at least she had to give her mother an explanation. In the years that followed, I guess she must have regretted that decision.
Frances soon discovers her mother's desire to make her big again in Hollywood, her mother wants Frances to live the way she wants, and she even "forces" Frances to play the piano she wants to hear. Frances stared at a picture of herself when she played the piano (that's what her mother wanted her to be), and at her own reflection in the mirror, stopped suddenly, and went out to find her father. During the conversation with her father, she asked tearfully: "Will you understand me no matter what decision I make?" After getting a positive answer, Frances got up to leave, and before leaving, she suddenly hugged her father and said Father straightened the collar. Father watched Frances walk away down the street from the raindrop-covered window. I think Frances was thinking about death at that moment.
But when she got home, she happily told her mother that she thought of a way to live happily, that is, to become an ordinary person, raise a dog in the countryside, and live an ordinary life. What made her change her decision? unknown. Maybe she couldn't bear to see her mother sad for her departure, maybe she hasn't completely lost hope in life at this time. But her mother's strong opposition finally completely verified a fact she had already noticed - her mother didn't care whether her spirit was really healthy and whether she could really be happy again. She also realized that her mother believed she was doing what was best for Frances. Arguing is useless at this point. She walked out of the house at midnight and left with Harry.
Harry still hopes that Frances can marry him, and after all these experiences, Frances has instinctively rejected the people around her, she feels that the people around her are always clinging to her, trying to get something from her, trying to control her Life, although she knew in her heart that Harry was not such a person, but life experience forced these thoughts into her mind, and now, it seemed that she couldn't even do anything about the thoughts in her own mind. She could have had a chance to have a happy ending with Harry, as she said, the plain, country life of a few kids and a dog. Her helplessness is here, and happiness is in front of her eyes, but life has changed her, making her see herself and happiness missing. Harry left her.
In order to "cure" her, the mother said that her daughter was on the run from a mental illness, and Frances was eventually taken back to the mental hospital. That's when the darkest moments of her life really unfolded. She was taken care of as a critically ill mental patient, her hair was cut off indiscriminately, sometimes she was naked and sometimes wearing a corset, she was tied to the bed, and she was subjected to electric shocks like a commonplace meal. . . The nurses in the mental hospital put the men outside, and they can have a shot with her for 20 yuan. She has been completely destroyed, like a dead body. When she was raped, she stared at the dark ceiling in the ward with her eyes wide open and muttered to herself: "...a whole bright sky...". It was only then that the slightest cries of her instinct as a "human" could be heard. Whether it was a line from a movie in the past or a chapter of some prayers is impossible to verify. Perhaps it was just a distraction to make time pass faster, and she had given up hope of being rescued.
Eventually, Frances was used as a demonstration tool for a new type of surgery, and a lobotomy was performed in front of everyone. When explaining the principle of surgery to the audience (which may be the hospital's sponsors or potential customers), the doctor said, "After surgery, the patient will show a uniform emotional performance, that is, there will be no major emotional ups and downs, and her imagination will , creativity will also decline." Frances listened to these explanations quietly on the operating table, she no longer cared what others would do with her body. The original Frances was long dead before the doctor struck the hammer, severing the neural connections between her anterior thalamus and the main body of her brain. It was just a body lying there, and she didn't care what they were going to do with it.
Frances was "cured". At least her doctors, family and the public think so. Due to her "legendary experience" in the past 8 years, Hollywood, who has always been good at speculation, once again gave her a role, and she became a public figure again. She appeared on various talk shows, and cooperated with the host to do live effects. It's a professional smile. Harry was watching the show on TV, watching her talk about her illness, hearing her say that she had re-entered society through "faith in God". When the whole world was falsely celebrating her "rebirth", only Harry knew that this person was no longer the girl who wrote "God is Dead" when she was 14 years old.
Frances was walking home from the talk show, Harry stopped her on the side of the road, they had a quiet and restrained conversation (perhaps calm and restraint was the only option for Frances at this time), and they walked forward together in the dark. Harry York's unwavering love for Frances Farmer is the film's only warm touch. But in the subtitles at the end of the film - "She died at the age of 56, Harry was not with her, she died as she had lived...alone." Life is even crueler than the movie.
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Frances may have never played a role on screen that she was truly proud of. Her best performance was the rehearsal with the patients on the eve of the mental hospital's preparation for a discharge appraisal. Amid the cheers of the patients "You should be the best actress," and her own unbridled laughter, she was satisfied with her performance. Because at that time, she no longer needed to "act" despair, she was despair itself.
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