To celebrate our Tenth Anniversary screening here at Splodge!, we return to one of our ever-favourite hobby-horses, the horror sub-genre of PSYCHIATRY! The feature we have chosen for this evening’s delectation requires no mutants, aliens or psychotic killers. To the contrary, Ken Loach’s lens turns squarely back on contemporary Western society in the Advanced Capitalism phase.

Based on the teleplay IN TWO MINDS by David Mercer, it was in turn drawn from a case-study, by Scottish  "anti-psychiatry" doctor R. D. LAING, dealing with a chronic schizophrenic, published in THE DIVIDED SELF as THE GHOST OF WEED GARDEN.

The quasi-documentary style of the film lends immediacy to an unremitting portrayal of the destructiveness possible in the nuclear family, the British class system, and to a polemic against traditional psychiatry. While heightening the emotional effect,  we’ll readily admit that Loach’s relatively uncritical acceptance of some of Laing's opinions runs the risk of oversimplifying the issues involved.

FAMILY LIFE followed POOR COW (1967) and KES (1969) in the trilogy that formed the first part of ‘Kenneth’ Loach’s cinema career. There aren’t many laughs in David Mercer’s script (already filmed by Loach as a ‘Wednesday Play’ in 1967), but there is plenty of anger.

The casting of Ratcliffe and, as her parents, Bill Dean and Grace Cave , is inspired. Loach’s direction, together with the camera-work and editing, produce a masterpiece of realist cinema.
 
It's an incredibly difficult film about mental illness and family breakdown, played out like a real-life documentary. In fact, if you caught this halfway through, you would be hard pushed to choose between fact and fiction. The only giveaway would be a prior  awareness from British TV of the main players, including SANDY RATCLIFF (long-time EASTENDERS character) and Bill Dean (best known as Harry Cross in BROOKSIDE, in the 1980s).




Pale and lovely SANDY RATCLIFFE plays nineteen year old factory worker, Janice Baildon, whose schizophrenia is seemingly connected to, if not induced by her upright, repressed, clueless, lower middle-class parents, with whom she lives in a London suburban house. Amidst a painful adolescence, she's struggling to hold down a job and struggling to come to terms with an abortion that was forced upon her. That's all compounded by her parents' well-settled ideas and attitudes - her unobtrusive disciplinarian father (Bill Dean) and her domineering mother (Grace Cave) who wants to protect her daughter from the perceived evils of the modern world.

In their eyes, rules, regulations, tradition and the heavy-handed approach of the British stiff-upper lip are all that are needed to keep their daughter safe from a world in moral decline. But it's just adding to the pressure on the shy, withdrawn Janice - and the girl gradually slides towards a mental breakdown. Her mother has the last word on the abortion (“it is disgusting, it is not Christian”), sexuality (“a very beautiful thing when it is in its place, in marriage”). Learning that Janice is pregnant, her mother  insists on the procedure and then has her seek out the ministrations of the psychiatric profession.

She initially finds hope in the forward-thinking methods of one psychiatrist, Dr Donaldson (Michael Riddall). who trys to convince the small family that the origin of Janice's problems are closer to home than they realise. That's not exactly what her parents want to hear, so, after the doctor's contract is terminated by the local hospital, they send their daughter to another psychiatrist, but, this time, she's left in the hands of a more traditional medical team - with more aggressive methods of curing her alleged mental problems, including electric shock and sedation (tranquillizers).







Worse still, she also goes back under the watchful eye of her family - the likely root of all her problems - prompting a further decline in Janice's condition, despite the attempts at intervention from boyfriend Tim (Malcolm Tierney), the one steady influence in her life.

It's a difficult film, made even more difficult by the quality of the acting on display, making this slice-of-reality very real indeed.

Whether it's intended as criticism of the treatment of mental health in the UK at the time, or a study of family breakdown and the ever-increasing generation gap isn't clear. At the end of the day, it works on all three levels, intentional or not. Loach questions the family and psychiatric institutions, while showing with rigour how the pressures of family expectations and medical technological hubris can transform a simple crisis of adolescence into full-on psychosis.

The shock of RD LAING’s 1960s ideas about the terrible effects of ‘family life’ seem to come from long ago in this age of genomes and SSRIs, but the emotions in the film still strike home with full force. FAMILY LIFE is an indictment against the parental dogma of “normality” and conventional medicine, and a passionate plea in favour of the theories of Laing (here fictionalized by the character of Dr. Donaldson), more centred on expression, listening and  understanding.

Commentators have acclaimed the documentary ‘feel’ of the film, but as Loach says: “There are obviously little tricks of the trade to try and make it look as though it is happening for the first time, but it’s set up like a fiction”. Today’s aspiring filmmakers can still learn from Loach. If you're a Ken Loach fan, this is certainly one that you’ve GOTTA SEE. Prod Co: Kestral Films. Prod: Tony Garnett. Dir: KENNETH LOACH. Wr: David Mercer. Phot: Charles Stewart. Mus: Marc Wilkinson. Ed: Roy Watts. Cast: Sandy Ratcliff (Janice Baildon); Bill Dean (Mr. Baildon); Grace Cave (Mrs. Baildon); Malcolm Tierney (Tim); Hilary Martin (Barbara Baildon); Michael Riddall (Dr Donaldson); Alan MacNaughton (Mr. Caswell); Johnny Gee; Bernard Atha; Edwin Brown; Freddie Clemson; Alec Coleman. 108 mins. Courtesy of Screensound.

Minor programme changes may occur due to unforseen circumstances.
Feature runs last; shorts order may vary from listing.
 
* Acknowledging  ACMI Inc. & ScreenSound Australia ;) *
 
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