The Scribbler

Even setting aside certain more fantastic elements, I don't know how accurate The Scribbler is in its portrayals of people with various mental health issues. Suki has disassociative identity disorder, including one particular personality called The Scribbler. It speaks only by writing, backwards, and when it's in control, lines and designs will appear all over Suki's skin.

She was being treated with something called the Siamese Burn machine, which somehow gets rid of the personalities by, essentially, electrocuting her. And the machine can somehow determine how many identities are left. With 9 left, Suki's deemed well enough to leave the hospital and move into a tower for other outpatients. And as she arrives, literally as she approaches the front door, residents start falling to their deaths. Suki has a portable version of the treatment, but each time she uses it, she loses some track of some time, and each time there's another dead body, and the Scribbler has written more stuff on her walls, and modified the machine even more.

Every so often, I see this post pop up on one of the handful of tumblrs I read, where someone argues that van Gogh would never have created his works of art if he existed today, because he'd have been on medication for his depression, and this would have "blunted" his artistic talent. And every time I see it, it has a response from someone below arguing that's dumb, depression doesn't help you be more creative because you suffer, van Gogh did his best work when he was receiving help, etc. I feel like this film would agree with the first person. It seems to argue that at least some people, maybe all people, have some greater, true self inside, but that society tries to choke it out by encouraging conformity. That society should be formed around people being their truest selves, and building something from that.

Except some of these people's true selves kill people, just like in the conformity world, so that doesn't really seem like an upgrade. Unless the argument is that the ones that kill are that way because they've been bent under the pressure over time, but in that case, it would hardly be the person's true self, at least in the way the movie's arguing, would it?

The constant question running through my mind of how accurate a representation this is of multiple personalities aside, it wasn't a bad way to spend 90 minutes. I wasn't sure how things were going to play out at the end, if the story would be a lie, a metaphor, the truth, if it was going to veer into darker horror style. For a long time, I thought the entire thing was going to end up inside Suki's head, that all the characters were her different personalities, like that Identity movie with John Cusack and Ray Liotta (but thankfully not Ray Liotta's vodka). Some of the lighting work is pretty good. There's a fight at the end that's not so good. The camera can't quite make it look as it good as it's trying to.

The costuming is cool. Everyone has their own style, although the few guy characters are pretty slovenly looking compared to the women. Guys, you could at least shave. I was admittedly mostly watching it because Eliza Dushku was in it, and for something that seems set at least relatively close to the modern day, the way her hair was done suggested an much earlier era. It actually reminded me of some of the actresses in L.A. Confidential, which doesn't seem to match everyone else, but does fit with how everyone is doing their own thing, stylistically. And anyway, she wore the look really well, so I am not complaining.