Toronto Film Review: ‘Brain on Fire’

Chief Film Critic
Peter Debruge

@AskDebruge

Chloë Grace Moretz stars in a laughable portrait of a young woman suffering from a mysterious ailment that renders her psychotically paranoid.

Just when you thought the disease-of-the-week genre had run out of diseases, along comes “Brain on Fire,” a made-for-TV-style look at anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, an extremely rare autoimmune disorder that transforms an ambitious (but otherwise supremely uninteresting) young New York Post reporter into a raving psychotic. Based on the bestselling memoir by Susannah Cahalan, played here by Chloë Grace Moretz as a teeth-gnashing, plate-smashing nut case in apparent need of an exorcism, this embarrassingly earnest film — produced by Charlize Theron — argues for the importance of doctors going the extra mile, when textbook diagnoses won’t do. It’s the sort of role for which the Razzies were invented, and what little audience it finds will almost certainly be heckling as they watch Moretz implode.

If ever there was a movie for Lindsay Lohan — who followed a similar path of promise, meltdown, and tentative recovery — this is it, though the role was originally earmarked for Dakota Fanning. Moretz is a fine actress who comes across as little more than a puffy-looking Cabbage Patch Kid here: a bland, doll-faced blonde who’s tired of writing softball stories about social media, but wants to make a name for herself at work. On the continuum of young female characters determined to break into the unforgiving New York shark tank, Susannah falls somewhere between Anne Hathaway’s entitled “The Devil Wears Prada” assistant and the no-boundaries young journalist Morgan Saylor plays in the infinitely edgier “White Girl” — though she’s lucky to have a wise-cracking desk-mate (Jenny Slate) and compassionate editor (Tyler Perry!) in her corner.

She has also snagged New York’s most vanilla boyfriend, a relatively ambitionless musician played by Thomas Mann, who serenades her in the buff and seems to get along just fine with her divorced parents (Richard Armitage and Carrie-Anne Moss). We meet the latter, along with their new flames, at a confusing birthday picnic, when 24-year-old Susannah notices the first symptom that something isn’t right: She can’t blow out the candles on her own cake. Soon, she’s hearing voices, vacantly clutching her forehead, and stepping in front of taxi cabs — basically, acting like that first character to be infected in a zombie movie, the one who takes half an hour to realize what’s happening to her brain, but powerless to reverse the process. If the movie were better written, the effect would be no less horror-movie-worthy, since, for all intents and purposes, no one can identify what’s wrong with her.

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A doctor with 20 years experience (Vincent Gale) takes one look and dismisses it as a standard case of “partying too hard.” Susannah’s parents aren’t too sure, demanding that the medical establishment do its job. Meanwhile, Moretz plays the character’s mounting paranoia like something out of daytime television, persecuted by water dripping in the sink at home (“What!? Do it again!” she challenges the offending faucet) or climbing on cabinets and shrieking at her colleagues at work. All of this feels far removed from director Gerard Barrett’s sphere of comfort. What distinguished the Irish helmer’s first two features — “Pilgrim Hill” and “Glassland,” in which Toni Collette plunged alcoholism’s raw rock bottom — was precisely his ability to resist the kind of cutesy melodrama he’s cooked up here.

After decades of celebrating the commitment of actors for sensitively portraying physical and mental disorders on-screen, audiences have become wary of indulgent (and worse, patronizing) stunt performances, à la Gary Oldman’s turn as a dwarf in “Tiptoes” or Rosie O’Donnell playing it “slow” in “Riding the Bus with My Sister.” We live in an era of ironic detachment — the age of snark — in which jaded audiences have an increasingly hard time keeping a straight face when confronted with such superficial bids for empathy. (Contrast that with another Toronto film festival premiere, “Maudie,” which practically ignores its protagonist’s crippling arthritis in an attempt to capture her soul instead.) But who is the real Susannah Cahalan? Apart from her ailment, why should we care? This film suggests that all she needed was a good doctor (played here by Navid Negahban) to restore her otherwise perfect life, though any script doctor can tell you the film’s problems run deeper than that, and chances are, if you could cut past the glib first-person narration, Cahalan has a far more compelling story to tell.

Toronto Film Review: 'Brain on Fire'
Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 14, 2016. Running time: 89 MIN.
Production
(Canada-Ireland-U.S.) A D Films (Canada), Broad Green Pictures (U.S.) release of a Foundation Features, Denver and Delilah Prods. production, with support from the Irish Film Board. (International sales: Mister Smith Entertainment, London.) Producers: A.J Dix, Beth Kono, Lindsay MacAdam, Rob Merilees, Charlize Theron. Executive producer; Lisa Wolofsky. Co-producer: Gerard Barrett.
Crew
Director, writer: Gerard Barrett, based on the memoir by Susannah Cahalan. Camera (color, widescreen): Yaron Orbach. Editor: JC Bond.
With
Chloë Grace Moretz, Jenny Slate, Carrie-Anne Moss, Richard Armitage, Tyler Perry, Thomas Mann, Navid Negahban, Vincent Gale.

Das nennt man dann wohl einen Verriss. Und er trifft die Hauptdarstellerin besonders hart.

Tja, es gibt auch die vollkommen entgegengesetzte Aussage, dass der Film nur dann gut ist, wenn CGM auf der Leinwand erscheint. Der ganz große Wurf ist der Film wohl nicht, aber auch hier fällt wiede auf, dass dem Film schon ein Stück weit der (allzu) positive Grundtenor der Vorlage zum Verhängnis wird. Unabhängig davon wie gut oder schlecht Thomas Mann ihn spielt, so hoffe ich doch sehr für Susannahs Ehemann, dass er diese Kritik nicht liest.

Süffisante und schadenfrohe Kritik.

Ich finde solche Kritiken eigentlich meistens amüsant zu lesen, habe aber eine Problem damit, wenn der Film ein ernstes, wahres Thema behandelt, vor allem, wenn die zentrale Figur der Geschichte noch lebt. Da wird in meinen Augen eine Grenze überschritten.
Wahrscheinlich ist der Film nicht brillant, hat aber ein wichtiges - und gut gemeintes - Anliegen und das sollte jeder Kritiker berücksichtigen.

...Der ganz große Wurf ist der Film wohl nicht, aber auch hier fällt wiede auf, dass dem Film schon ein Stück weit der (allzu) positive Grundtenor der Vorlage zum Verhängnis wird. ...

...

Genau das ist es - man mag den Film noch so lächerlich finden, er schildert eine wahre Geschichte derzeit noch lebender Personen. Daher ist gerade auch die Kritik am Freund/Ehemann in dieser Form für meinen Geschmack daneben.

Genau das ist es - man mag den Film noch so lächerlich finden, er schildert eine wahre Geschichte derzeit noch lebender Personen. Daher ist gerade auch die Kritik am Freund/Ehemann in dieser Form für meinen Geschmack daneben.

Ich für meinen Teil halte mich da an das Kalenderblatt vom 17. 09..

... Aber in dem Moment, wo reale, noch lebende Personen für ihr an sich ja humanes Handeln lächerlich gemacht werden, geht mir die Sache zu weit. Wobei man mit solchen Geisteshaltungen durchaus auch im RL konfrontiert wird, wenn man sich um erkrankte Angehörige kümmert. Da muss man Sprüche wie "Du bist ja schön blöd ..." auch aushalten lernen. ...

Im Moment finde ich es gerade doppelt schadv, dass wir UatS und Kritiken dazu nicht zum Vergleich heran ziehen können....
Ich sehe da eine verwandte Seele.

'Brain On Fire': Toronto Review

19 September, 2016 | By Wendy Ide

Dir: Gerard Barrett. Ireland/Canada. 2016. 95 mins

Susannah Cahalan’s mental illness memoir provides the source material for this by-the-numbers account of one woman’s rapid descent into psychosis. Chloë Grace Moretz plays 21 year-old Susannah, a cub reporter at the New York Post, and a girl with everything to look forward to. Then a rare brain disorder strikes and looks set to rob her of her job, her personality and her future.

The fact that Cahalan recovered enough to pen the book on which this is based means that the outcome of the story is no surprise. However, despite the fact that Susannah eventually manages to claw her way back from the brink of madness, this is a downbeat slog of a film which tells a not particularly involving story.

Cahalan’s book spent time on the New York Times bestsellers list, so familiarity with the source material might help to raise audience awareness of the film. Whether or not that will translate into box office is less certain: gruelling mental anguish is not necessarily the easiest sell. Lacking the spark of originality and formal daring of, for example, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, this is a film which might be best suited to small screen viewing.

We are introduced to Susannah as she is, according to her ironic voice over, in her ‘dream job at the NY Post’. She trades banter with her colleague and desk neighbour, played by Jenny Slate, and holds her own against a bullish and impatient editor (Tyler Perry). She is in the honeymoon period of a new romance with musician Stephen (Thomas Mann). And her divorced parents are sufficiently amicable to bury the hatchet and jointly host a birthday party for her.

The first hint that something is not quite right is illustrated through the sound design. The sharp edges of words are blurred; there’s an echo which makes it sound as though Susannah is walking away from conversations and into a cave. There’s a constant sense of distance between Susannah and the people who crowd around her, unaware for the moment that anything is amiss. Later, she hears voices which jostle into her mind and push out her other thoughts.

Visually, Barrett uses some fairly obvious techniques: the camera tilts at precarious angles, the image drifts in and out of focus. He overuses montages of Susannah looking confused on various forms of public transport.

And then the seizures start. Her symptoms – by now her behaviour is becoming erratic, with reckless highs and paralysing lows – are dismissed by the doctors as burnout. She has been drinking too much and partying too hard, they say, and this, coupled with the pressures of work, has caused her to crack. Before long, Susannah is hospitalised and facing long term admittance to a psychiatric ward. Her parents – a cool turn by Carrie-Anne Moss contrasts with lots of strident shouting from Richard Armitage – keep the pressure on the medics to try and find the reason for Susannah’s sudden deterioration.

Although her character spends much of the third act in a catatonic state staring blankly at a wall, the role still poses some challenges for Moretz. She’s fine with the grand gestures of the table-jumping manic phase, but less confident when it comes to conveying the dread and uncertainty that comes with losing touch with the outside world. But ultimately, the issues that confront Moretz are symptomatic of a deeper problem here: while Cahalan’s ordeal may make for a compelling book, it does not, on the evidence of this picture, seem particularly suited to cinema.

TIFF Review: Brain on Fire

Posted by Hillary Butler on Sep 19, 2016 in All, biopic, drama, Film, Reviews | 0 comments
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Imagine being a normal, vibrant 21 year old. You have your dream job, you’re in a loving relationship. Things seem to be going well. Then, just as you traverse the streets of New York City, just going about your days, things start to become fuzzy. Sounds are amplified, things don’t make sense, you hear voices that aren’t there, see things other’s can’t see. This is the true story of Susannah Cahalan, adapted from her memoir Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness.

In the film, Brain on Fire, Susannah is played by Chloe Grace Moretz. She is a junior reporter at the New York Post, well loved by her editor Richard (Tyler Perry), and by her co-worker (Jenny Slate). Her parents (Carrie-Anne Moss and Richard Armitage), while divorced, are amicable, even throwing Susannah a birthday party together. It is here, surrounded by family and her boyfriend Steven (Thomas Mann) that she realizes something is wrong – first zoning out completely then unable to blow out her birthday candles.

Her symptoms worsen from there, though at first Susannah thinks it might be the flu. Feeling spacey and tired, she makes a trip to the doctor where blood tests and an MRI reveal no abnormalities. Her symptoms are chalked up to stress and ‘too much partying’, despite no evidential proof that she’s overdoing it. Susannah tries to cope with life as she deteriorates – having drastic mood swings, then psychotic episodes and eventually seizures, landing her in hospital.

Chloe Grace Moretz clearly comes to this project from a place of passion, and we see how she has matured a little in this role as well. While some may think her portrayal a little over the top she is there to assure that we understand Susannah’s decline – which was in fact severe. She had access to video of Susannah in hospital and extensive time with the subject herself. I frankly thought it was pretty brave, though whether Moretz is really ready to carry such a film on her own can still be argued. It is hard to say whether the role in the hands of a more experienced actor may have made things more captivating. It’s the supporting cast here which seems to bear the brunt of the responsibility for filling the film’s best scenes.

Director and screenwriter Gerard Barrett has a tough time making a film that is as compelling as its source material. Rare is the film that could actually benefit from being a little longer, but a bit more introduction to Susannah before we see her decline would have garnered a little more of an emotional connection. As well, the film ends very abruptly once Susannah is properly diagnosed. Little of the struggle of her recovery is shown, and while this makes the ‘happy ending’ very neat, tidy and obvious, it also belittles it slightly. Injecting a little more drama could have avoided the film from feeling so much like the TV ‘movie of the week’.

Susannah’s tale, while surely one of bravery and survival, is as much a cautionary tale than anything else. Along the way, her parents fight with the medical professionals at the hospital, looking for answers the doctors don’t have, even as they are on the brink of placing her in a psychiatric facility. The disease from which Susannah suffered was little known at the time, and still is something that requires public recognition to help those that could be misdiagnosed. For this purpose, the film is important viewing, however it lacks the true drama that would have made it great movie viewing. Cahalan’s book is a better window into the truly horrific nature of this disease and her struggle to return to normalcy.

TIFF 2016 Review: “Brain on Fire” (2016) ★★★★

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Ulkar Alakbarova in All About TIFF, Festival Coverage, Movie Reviews, TIFF

Unfortunately, we live in a time where doctors are getting more careless and heartless; visits to the hospital has turned into a regular routine where physicians treat the patients primarily as a source of money. True or false is a personal opinion each and everyone can have. However, what happens in Brain On Fire is a great example of labeling young people or jumping to conclusion when extra effort is required to save one life.

Susannah Cahalan (Chloë Grace Moretz) has an excellent career at New York Post. She gets interview assignments and works hard to get her first ever front page article. That of course is her dream she wants to make it come true. But all of a sudden she starts acting and doing strange things that surprises everyone around her. Slowly, an intelligent bright woman turns into an uncontrollable insane person. Realizing that there is something wrong with her health going on, Susannah approaches Dr. Ryan to find the cause of her unexpected change in behavior, but all what she hears in return is to party less, stop drinking and have enough rest…

As the story unfolds, Susannah’s colleague and friend (Jenny Slate) tries to be as supportive as possible to help Susannah overcome troubles she gets at work. Her boyfriend, Stephen (Thomas Mann) stays beside her while all specialists tell the same thing – she has no issues with health whatsoever. But one day when she was on the edge of locking up in a psychotic facility, Dr. Khan (Aqam Darshi) approaches Dr. Najjar (Navid Negabhan) who finally manages to find the cause of her madness – where her own body sets her brain on fire.

Brain on Fire is based on Susannah Cahalan’s memoir where she describes the nightmare she had to go through until one doctor’s effort, who finally manages to explain her strange and sometime, terrifying behavior. The writer and director Gerard Barrett casts Chloë Grace Moretz to portray a real person where the task, I must admit, for the actor was not so easy to accomplish. Luckily, Moretz with her performance, delivers enough tension and depth to the character she played, which will help you to sympathize with Susannah even more.

In conclusion, Brain on Fire is a solid drama about a mislead diagnosis and the mistakes doctors make every day. Also, it may not be one of the best movies ever made based on a true story, but it certainly is a decent one when you will find yourself fully engaged throughout. In the end, it’s quite an important film to watch as stories like this happen with many people, but not all of them are lucky enough to get its happy ending.