Brad Anderson
Stonehearst Asylum

Directed by the brilliant director Brad Anderson ("Session 9", "The Machinist", "Transsiberian", "Vanishing On 7th Street"...) "Stonehearst Asylum" (2014), borrowing some themes from Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (2010) and a certain grotesque allegory in the style of "The Wicker Man" by Anthony Shaffer/Robin Hardy (1973), is a film that originally introduces us to a journey into the wonderful and spectacular world of the human psyche. The film is a Joseph Gangemi adaptation of a short story by the great Edgar Allan Poe titled "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" first published in November 1845.

We are in England on Christmas Eve 1899, and a young psychiatrist named Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) arrives at Stonehearst Asylum (practically a mental institution) to begin his service. Upon his arrival, he is welcomed by superintendent Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), who immediately reveals himself to be an eccentric personality with original ideas in the field of medical and psychiatric science (ideas that, as we can now assert with informed reasoning, have in the past been the subject of practices that can be defined truly as horrors), consisting of no particular treatment for the patient and indulging their behavior. After all, he explains, if a man leads a happy life believing he is a horse, why should he be made to suffer by trying to make him something that would instead make him unhappy? Moreover, according to his decisions, there is a direct, almost commingled, and exchanged relationship between the staff of the facility and the patients who practically share every type of common life experience. In this context, the young man immediately falls in love with the beautiful Eliza Graves (Kate Beckinsale). Certain she has no reason to be there, driven by passion, he tries to convince her to leave with him, but it will be Eliza who says that escaping is impossible and warns him about the true nature of Stonehearst Asylum.

In a crescendo of tension and hallucinatory visions, the story will evolve in an unexpected manner: Brad Anderson is brilliant in not revealing his cards until a finale filled with allegorical scenes with strong symbolic content. But do not expect any rhetoric: the film does not deny the existence of mental illnesses nor does it intend to apply that false humanitarian principle according to which in the end we would all be either sane or mad depending on the situation: if you think you are a horse it is not true that you are happy, but evidently there is a condition that needs to be identified and perhaps treated because that "happiness" can only serve as a cover for deep and painful reasons.

Standing out in an exceptional cast (Brendan Gleeson, David Thewlis, Michael Caine...) is the talented Jim Sturgess, but above all, Ben Kingsley reigns supreme, whose character is the key figure around whom the whole story revolves. A film as beautiful as it is stimulating at the same time on the level of considerations about human nature which - just to get back to the Oscars - is much more complex, fascinating, and rich in perhaps unlimited and at the same time mysterious possibilities than any supposed deity in the form of the swamp monster will ever manage to be.