Watch Prozac Nation For Free

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A different way of telling a story

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

I was glad to see that this was recently on one of the movie channels, since the DVD isn't available from Netflix. I'd just read the book. As someone currently prescribed to Prozac, this was a must for me, to see how--if at all-- I could identify with the character from the book/movie. Some incidents were identifiable to me. The events depicted occurred over 20 years ago, but there are still many people on Prozac today. Coming to accept that you have depression may be hard for some people, but I came to accept it and learned not to be ashamed to admit I have been on this med. This film seems to convey that message. Don't be afraid to admit you feel depressed. You can be helped.

Prozac Nation is a well-directed movie featuring particularly strong performances from its star Christina Ricci, and Jessica Lange, who plays Ricci's mother; it is, however, an almost totally joyless experience, charting the mental problems suffered by promising journalism student Lizzie (Ricci), whose troubled childhood, and subsequent substance abuse, has left her with a severe case of depression. Watching Lizzie slowly become more paranoid, obsessive, and self-destructive, driving away those who love her in the process, is far from fun viewing, and I strongly recommend that those suffering from depression themselves give this film a wide berth.I know I should have stopped watching straight after Ricci's nude scene (the only bit in the film to put a smile on my face).Being such a downer of a movie, albeit a well made one, Prozac Nation is hard to rate, so I'll take the easy way out and give it 5/10.

Well. There is saying "There is nothing more efficient to break the confidence than Jewish mother". I quite didn't understand that until I have meet some families with Jewish ancestry and very, very pathological relationships between mothers and daughters. Mothers are typically very demanding, cold to daughters but full of self pity and perform emotional scenes to their daughters full of blame and incredibly poisonous mix of love and hate. The daughters feel mix of hate and guilt to mothers, they feel they are not "up to the expected standards". They would like to set themselves free, but they cannot, because they are tied to their family very strongly. Every guy who tried to get between the mother and daughter in this fight felt he lives in hell house. Everyone had to leave this hell house sooner (the boyfriend) or later (the father). This is portrayed very realistically in the movie. The pathology is here and what is worse it propagates from one generation to the next generation. Unfortunately no pill is solution to this sort of pathology. It removes the pain but not the wound itself.On the other hand the movie fails completely as the description of depression. Depression is not hysterical run to destruction and self destruction as shown in the movie. Depression sucks all the energy from people and leaves them optically calm, until something bad happens (suicide attempt). I know about several suicides of young people, usually "out of the blue", because these people were so depressed that they were not able to communicate their depression and seemed "only tired or ill" to the others. This was very sad because help from psychiatrist could actually save their lives. Not a single case was similar to the movie, usually even parents did not see what was coming, not even their friends.So, this is not movie about depression and "problem than haunts US". It is movie about inability to reflect herself or to get any insight into her situation (the part about "swallowing the lover" is especially pathological and shows total narcissism and selfish personality). There is no movement to good, no progress, only pills that replace other drugs and alcohol to hide the problem. This is description of utter failure to resolve or achieve anything, she is as damaged at the end as she was in the beginning. The idea that someone could try to find something of use for his life from this movie is actually very frightening. Very, very bad example, please see this as only warning how to NOT proceed on therapy!

I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It gets a 6 instead of a 5 for the lovely music.Since this is based on a memoir, I guess we can easily guess why the author disapproved of the film. Like all films, it has to be edited for time and pacing, and thus, the pure accuracy is lost.I don't think it took away from the memoir itself, necessarily. It's faster and straight forward. I think her strong desire for a quick fix drug should have appeared more.I thought I could relate more to the book and film, but I guess I can't. Yes, she comes off as whiny and manipulative in the film, but compared to the book, she is an angel. It seemed to only scratch the surface of depression. No time to feel sympathy whatsoever.So I guess, in that way, the film failed to offer an insight, but rather to show what it's like to be a friend or family member of a depressive. We already know what it's like to be around a depressed person. Even the depressed know that they drive others crazy. There is nothing new here.The cast did a great job. The always-hysterical mother was captured pretty well, I think. They captured most of what was truly important in the memoir, so for having to cut it down to the length of a film, I have to give them credit for keeping the bare elements intact.It lacks clarity, but so does depression. I love the film for its truth, but I hate it for not providing the point of view that it was supposed to. It's on the fence, but worth watching for sure.