If you ever want to find out what exactly schizophrenia is like, sans the dramatization of A Beautiful Mind, but with a compelling story nonetheless, then this is the movie to watch.

And the story goes...

Lukas, a young man from a small town in Germany, moves to Cologne to pursue his university studies. He puts up with his sister, Kati, and her boyfriend, Jochen, and has a ball of a time as he discovers the big city and embraces his new-found freedom. Kati and Jochen, similarly excited by Lukas' arrival, gladly introduce him to some of their favourite pasttimes, which includes downing booze, driving across parks and ingesting hallucinogenic substances.

Lukas happily moves along, although occassionally perturbed by the effects of the hallucinogenic drugs which seemed to alter his sense of reality for the next few days. However, as the movie goes on, we start to realize something odd about Lukas as he begins displaying some rather bizzare behaviours.

Soon after that, things just became worse for Lukas. After experimenting with some other hallucinogenic stuff with Kati and Jochen, Lukas experienced flashes of altered realities whereby he heard Kati and Jochen hurling insults at him, even when they weren't actually moving their lips. The voices went on till the next few days, and got more and more intense from then on, dominating every single moment of his thoughts. While the voices started out by mocking him, they gradually became more and more aggressive, threatening to kill him and urging him to end his life.

Lukas sought to manage the voices rationally when they first appeared by trying to analyze the voices. However, as the symptoms intensified, Lukas frantically sought out ways to distract himself from the voices, failing which he grew aggressive against Jochen and Kati, thinking that they had really meant what "they" had said, and that they were the ones tormenting him. Eventually, the voices convinced him of his worthlessness and dared him to fight back. Lukas, who by then became reclusive and delirious, shouted and slamed things aimlessly in response to what the voices said. Finally, he surrendered. Desperate and confused, he threw himself out of the window.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) for Lukas, he survived the attempt, but was committed into the psychiatric hospital and heavily drugged with anti-psychotics to stabilize his condition, beginning yet another challenging life journey for Lukas and his loved ones altogether as he struggles with his medication and his new job.

Unfortunately, it also marks the beginning of a rather tiring journey for the viewer...

My opinion

In reading about the condition in textbooks it is usually hard to imagine how a patient with schizophrenia felt. A course I attended attempted to let us experience the feeling by getting two people to recite different paragraphs at the same time into both ears. It was very distracting and annoying even then.

However, the 2 paragraphs that were recited to us at that time were benign topics. When watching the movie, what you experienced through the soundtrack was overlapping voices of familiar persons insulting, mocking, belittling and threatening the protagonist. This experience was rather scarey for me as an audience - imagine how a real patient might have felt when experiencing this same thing all day and all night. How tormented and shattered one could become.

True to what various sources would tell you, during his psychotic episode Lukas was portrayed as an unkempt individual with incredibly distorted thoughts and very little sense of control over his behaviours. This led to considerable distress to Kati, who initially could not fathom what had gotten over her baby brother. When the inevitable happened, Kati found herself in disbelief that her nice, 'normal' brother could be mentally ill. You could feel the pain as she gazed at her brother in the hospital - catatonic, dazed and drooling from the anti-psychotics.

I have to admit that the movie was at times too realistic to the point of boredom. Even I found it neccessary to fast-forward certain parts of the movie that were simply too draggy and could have been expressed more effectively in a shorter time. Nevertheless, the realism was something that I appreciated simply for bringing the audience right into the life of someone tormented by a mental illness.

Nevertheless, character-wise, I liked the portrayal Kati as Lukas' only kin who he could turn to. As Lukas suffered the debilitating symptoms of his mental condition, he was unable to reach out to Kati. At the same time, Kati, while devastated and sympathetic to her brother's suffering, was also unable to reach out to him. That difficult relationship culmulated into an extremely poignant scene for me in the second half of the movie when Lukas, haunted by his persecutory thoughts again, made a decision to leave Kati, his only pillar of support, to yet another suicide attempt.

Apart from the condition, the movie also explored the diffiulties facing Lukas as a recovering patient. Once a student poised for a university education, Lukas was reduced to eeking out a living doing a menial job. Despite knowing that he had to be compliant with his medication to prevent any relapse, he decided to stop taking them as he the medicine had dulled him so much that he felt tired all the time, leading to a very sad predicament.

The storytelling

Director Hans Weingartner filmed the movie on a hand-held camera, perhaps to increase the realism of the plot. I have no issues with that as Weingartner also incorporated several interesting artistic elements to create the right atmosphere for his scenes. My particular favourite part was how the chaos and darkness of the scene of Lukas' first suicide immediately cut into a bright, clean but blurry scene seen through Lukas' eyes at the psychiatric hospital, with Kati smiling awkwardly into the camera, tears in her eyes, clearly not knowing how to react to her brother's condition.

However, as a result of the realism, the last part of the movie where we see Lukas, falling back into his psychotic state and displaying various bizzare behaviours became almost too painful to watch. I suppose it was the thought that since Lukas was "saved" once, why couldn't the scriptwriter "save" him again? In fact, it felt unneccessary and depressing that the protagonist was made to go through the ordeal all over again.

Then again, that probably was the whole point of the movie. In real life chances of a relapse of a mental condition is high. Then again, there are also those who cope very well with recovery. Whatever the case is, in a more mainstream movie the filmmakers probably would have ended the movie by the time of Lukas' second suicide, leaving audiences to wonder about his predicament. However, the screenwriters instead decided to give you the whole deal of what happened after that, losing much of that movie magic.

Also, despite my whole point about the movie being realistic, the very end of the movie came as a pretty abrupt shift from realism to movie-fantasy. It was almost too Zen-like for a movie that tried so hard to establish itself as a 'real-live' event.

The performances

Nevertheless, the flaws in the movie could not suppress the outstanding performances delivered by the main cast. In fact, I dare say that without the stallar performances of the cast, Weingartner's attempt at realism would have been a terrible disaster.

Daniel Brühl has been hailed as one of the most outstanding young actors from Europe in various reviews, which cite mainly his performances in more well-known movies such as Good Bye, Lenin! and The Edukators. However, for me, his role as Lukas in The White Sound will remain as one of his best works. As you would have read from above, the changes that Lukas goes through are so extreme and dynamic that you would expect that only an actor of considerable age and experience could handle the role competently. Yet Brulh, only 23 at the time of the movie, navigated the transitions so convincingly that watching him as Lukas battling the condition became a creepy affair. Unlike popular portrayals of people with mental illnesses, you sympathize with Lukas' bizzare behaviours and feel sad when you realize how the condition turned him into a lonely individual.

Anabelle Lachatte as Kati is outstanding as well. In the movie, Kati was introduced as an aimless young person bumping around and getting high with her live-in boyfriend. Like many caregivers of people with mental illness Kati initially dismissed her brother as simply being difficult. However, once Lukas became ill, Kati was suddenly forced to assume the responsibility of caring for her brother. She cried when Lukas in his dazed state refused to go home with her from the hospital, yet never shed a tear when physically attacked by his unpredictable aggressive episodes. Strong-willed yet vulnerable. Anabelle delivered such a convincing performance of a single caregiver of a loved one with mental illness. Having worked with such caregivers before, Anabelle could have easily been one of them.

Other observations

One reviewer at IMDB.com complained that the movie made a mistake by attributing Lukas' condition to both hereditary factors and drug consumption. However, one thing that should be mentioned is that when Kati tried to explained that they had done drugs the day before the whole debacle, the psychiatrist added that, "hallucinogenic drugs does sometimes trigger (schizophrenia)." Hence, what the psychiatrist really was saying was that Lukas was perhaps already predisposed to schizophrenia. The drugs only acted as a catalyst that triggered off the condition.

I read in another review that director Weingartner studied neurology, hence the very well-researched and realistic portrayal of the condition. In an interview on the official website, Weingartner also explained that he made the movie because he had an acquaintance with schizophrenia and felt the need to dispel myths about people with mental illnesses as killing psychopaths or crazy geniuses. I applaud him for that. However, as I said, that ending that he made was a real anti-climax and indeed does some disservice to him as a director. Or maybe I should blame the scriptwriters for that...

What's in the title?

If I were to guess, The White Sound probably refers to the auditory hallucinations which is a common characteristic of schizophrenia, by attributing a physical property to an intangible element. White also evokes the image of purity, which perhaps referred to Lukas' search for serenity amidst the disturbing experience.

Verdict

This is not a movie for everyone as it is so real that some scenes may come across as unneccessarily long or simply meant for the cutting board. Nevertheless, in that aspect itself one may also see it as a refreshing change from the usual dramatic styles of telling a story. That said, this movie certainly is not a case study of schizophrenia but it does give insightful details about the condition. So if you would like to see something more down-to-earth than A Beautiful Mind, do give this movie a chance.

Rating

3/5 - for the fact that despite an outstanding cast and realistic portrayal of schizophrenia, the movie is essentially 1/3 exciting and 2/3 boring.

Additional information

The official website (unfortunately it's in German. So if you're interested, you could try the translating function at Dictionary.com)

IMDB.com

What exactly is schizophrenia?

Such a common word these days, don't you think? The presentation of schizophrenia often represents what popular belief of mental illness is about. Nevertheless, in a nutshell, here's what the condition is really about (thanks to Wikipedia I don't have to dig out my research articles and type a thesis on it):

Schizophrenia, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction. Onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood,[1] with approximately 0.4–0.6%[2][3] of the population affected. Diagnosis is based on the patient's self-reported experiences and observed behavior. No laboratory test for schizophrenia exists.[4]

Studies suggest that genetics, early environment, neurobiology and psychological and social processes are important contributory factors. Current psychiatric research is focused on the role of neurobiology, but a clear organic cause has not been found. Due to the many possible combinations of symptoms, there is debate about whether the diagnosis represents a single disorder or a number of discrete syndromes. For this reason, Eugen Bleuler termed the disease the schizophrenias (plural) when he coined the name. Despite its etymology, schizophrenia is not synonymous with dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder or split personality; in popular culture the two are often confused.

The disorder is primarily thought to affect cognition, but it also usually contributes to chronic problems with behavior and emotion. People diagnosed with schizophrenia are likely to be diagnosed with comorbid conditions, including clinical depression and anxiety disorders; the lifetime prevalence of substance abuse is typically around 40%. Social problems, such as long-term unemployment, poverty and homelessness, are common and life expectancy is decreased; the average life expectancy of people with the disorder is 10 to 12 years less than those without, owing to increased physical health problems and a high suicide rate.[5]