Does anybody get the ending? (Spoilers)
He was made crazy by the doctor! Duh! To protect the killer of the previous patient.
shareActually, it was stated at the end that he had managed to write the story that exposed the killer and that he was probably going to win the Pulitzer Prize for it. It was after that that he went catatonic.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."
Yeah, that's the ending, but it made no sense. A non-schizophrenic person doesn't just become a catatonic schizophrenic. There were so many other endings that would have made more sense:
1. they lobotomized him because they didn't believe him or were all in on it
2. He ended up confused, unable to tell what was real
3. He told the story, but lost his girlfriend after she was charged with perjury and he ended up having a real nervous breakdown
Wouldn't performing electric shock treatments on a normal person cause some psychological problems?
shareIt's been some years since I saw this but I didn't take it as meant to be a particularly realistic depiction of mental illness nor asylums. At the risk of reading too much into it but it seemed the journalist was already at the edge of sanity simply by embarking on such a foolishly dangerous venture just for the sake of a prestigious prize. In other words it was his obsessive, single minded ambition that damaged his mental health. I could also imagine the hospital as a distorted mirror of a society where ambitions and dreams are cruelly thwarted, but I'm not entirely sure that's what Fuller wanted to convey.
shareWouldn't performing electric shock treatments on a normal person cause some psychological problems?
It would have the same side effects it has on patients with depression (the usual reason for ECT nowadays): varying degrees of memory loss and confusion, which usually resolve with time but sometimes don't. Anyway, the point is that it wouldn't turn a mentally healthy person into a schizophrenic. As others have pointed out, I think we're supposed to believe that Johnny was predisposed to mental illness. His experiences in that crazy hospital (no pun intended) tipped him over the edge.
What he certainly would have experienced would be side effects from the anti-psychotic drugs they would have been giving him, something Fuller never touches on because he wasn't making a documentary about the state of psychiatry in 1963. share
"You're suffering from a form of dementia praecox incident to the age of puberty characterized by childish behavior hallucinations and emotional deterioration".
There is your answer, given by the doctor somewhere in the middle of the film. This diagnosis isn't based on Johnny's play-the-schizo performance. It is rather based on actual signs the doc has already recognized. Which means that Johnny isn't exactly as sane as one would think in the first place. Nor that this could happen to any sane person under the same situation, had he not already several unknown issues.
As for his catatonic ending, it doesn't just happen suddenly. There are the 2 incidents with Johnny "losing his voice" preparing us for what was about to ensue.
JimmyCagney
"You're suffering from a form of dementia praecox incident to the age of puberty characterized by childish behavior hallucinations and emotional deterioration".
There is your answer, given by the doctor somewhere in the middle of the film. This diagnosis isn't based on Johnny's play-the-schizo performance. It is rather based on actual signs the doc has already recognized. Which means that Johnny isn't exactly as sane as one would think in the first place. Nor that this could happen to any sane person under the same situation, had he not already several unknown issues.
As for his catatonic ending, it doesn't just happen suddenly. There are the 2 incidents with Johnny "losing his voice" preparing us for what was about to ensue.
Nice analysis JimmyCagney.
I figured that the doctors saw past his act and gave actual diagnosis of his mental state. I couldn't see how that impacted the story. Your post help me tie those scenes together. Especially since I didn't realize we were supposed to take Johnny "losing his voice" as a mental episode. Other movies use the "thinking out loud" technique for characters to share what's going on in their mind without them having to talk through their mouth.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share