המתת השור

Perhaps the title of the HBO documentary by director Dana Perry might have been called A Family Interrupted. For every completed suicide, one finds a trail of other casualties made up of everyone who ever touched or was touched by that individual. This is the lesson and the legacy captured so artfully and movingly in Boy Interrupted.

I must admit at the outset that my burden in reviewing and analyzing a film has seldom felt quite so heavy.*

The boy referred to in the title of this sobering documentary is the son of the film's director and its cinematographer (Hart Perry), who suffered from a severe and intractable bipolar depression and committed suicide when he was 15 years old. His name was Evan Scott Perry.

I emphasize Evan's middle name because it's difficult to tell Evan's story without knowing something about the life of his paternal uncle, Scott Perry, who also committed suicide at age 21. This piece of family history was known to Evan at a very early age. Evan's -- and to a great extent Scott's -- story unfolds as his parents, his brother, his grandmother, Beatrice, his late Uncle's fiancee, Martine Gerard (engaged to Scott when he died in 1971 remaining close to the Perry family), mental health professionals, teachers, and friends are interviewed. Their stories are juxtaposed with home movies taken from Evan's birth through the days before his tragic death in 2005.

Evan's loved ones have no recourse but to cope imperfectly, admitting they will never be the same. But, too often, the choice of those suffering with intractable affective disorders (Spalding Gray, Primo Levi, and Seung-Hui Cho come to mind) including major depressions, bipolar depressions, and bipolar disorder (sometimes presenting with psychotic features) choose suicide because extreme symptoms such as hopelessness, pointlessness, a gross lack of judgment, impulsivity, distorted perceptions, alienation, and excruciating despair are simply too overwhelming to endure.

The film is powerful even though it offers more questions than answers, as it examines not just one precious, joyful and tragic life, but many lives across three generations -- artists and sculptors, psychiatrists and milieu therapists, teachers and students. Like any exceptional film -- fictional narrative or documentary, released theatrically or on television (where HBO continues to distinguish itself) -- Boy Interrupted captures a bit of magic.

Evan was as charming as he was exasperating, which are the hallmark signs and the paradoxes one experiences in dealing with bipolar individuals. He could be loving and extremely affectionate -- often curling up in his mother's loving arms -- only to turn around and frighten his devoted family and even his psychiatrist who remarks, "He was the scariest kid I ever saw in my life." His teachers marveled at his zest for life and his obsession with death contending with suicide attempts, one involving climbing to the roof of P.S. 11 in Manhattan and threatening to jump. Evan made numerous suicidal gestures and some homicidal threats. His parents would move heaven and earth in their search for answers and treatment that might save his life.

Evan loved Bob Dylan at an early age singing in a similar, quirky style marked by pathos and less-than-perfect pitch. He wrote lyrics and poetry that rivaled the moodiness of the late, Kurt Cobain, another kindred spirit. He would have run ins with the police and private sessions with a child psychiatrist; receive a misdiagnosis of depression and go on Prozac; be hospitalized at a the private facility Four Winds where he was diagnosed with bipolar depression, take drugs such as Depakote and later, Lithium, a slightly less sedative, mood stabilizer.

All were inadequate treatments with side effects and other cracks through which to fall. Finally, through a treatment modality known as "milieu therapy," exemplified by Wellspring in Bethlehem, CT, which Evan's father describes as an "expensive alternative," he flourished. There, Evan learned that actions have consequences and that boundaries are crucial for order and productivity. Inner demons were exorcised by the healing properties of structure, assignments, and meaningful activities in which social, interpersonal, and therapeutic alliances with seasoned, caring professionals blossomed. This experience -- which few families can afford financially and many others may never hear of -- added years to Evan's life and allowed him to be "mainstreamed" and enter York Prep where he was less precocious -- having formerly existed in the world of old souls -- and became more open to peers.
Sources: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/penelope-andrew/evans-excruciating-choice_b_249344.html