Lars and the Real Girl. 2007. 106 minutes.
Lars Lindstrom is the protagonist of this unusual and uproariously funny film. A 27-year-old unmarried man, he lives in the garage of his brother and sister-in-law's house in a small town in Canada.
Lars shies away from everyone. His sister-in-law tries to get him to share a meal, but he resists. Although amiable, he is isolated from everyone, even his co-workers at his office job.
A strenuous testing of Lars' ties to his community occurs because he overhears a conversation between two men in the office. They are discussing a full-size, anatomically correct female doll for sale online. Lars orders it, and when it's delivered, he tells his sister-in-law that he wants to bring his girl friend to dinner.
They are delighted until he carries the doll into the house. He talks to her and acts as if she is eating. They realize that he is deluded, thinking that the doll is real. He is not only deluded, but also innocent; rather than using the doll sexually, he respects it as his fiancée.
The family doctor is consulted. She suggests they stay connected by respecting Lars's delusion. Initially the townspeople, as they learn about the plan, are aghast. But gradually they fall into line. The plan also leads to Lars having regular therapy sessions with the doctor. His belief that Bianca is sick leads him to bring her regularly to the hospital. The doctor tells him that he might as well chat with her whilst Bianca is supposedly getting physical treatments.
Other citizens of the town also enter affectionately into Lars's world: the hospital staff and the whole church, including the minister. Because of the way he is treated, Lars gradually recovers from his delusion.
What are we to make of this fable? Perhaps the idea that "it takes a village." A book (1999) by the writer Jay Neugeboren is relevant. He investigated many cases of serious mental illness in which there was great improvement or complete recovery. The common thread he found was that at least one person treated the afflicted one with respect, sticking by him or her through thick or thin.
The biography (1998) of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner, is similar. Although Nash is not included in Neugeboren's book, Nash's biographer, Sylvia Nasar, shows that Nash's mother and wife aided his recovery, since they never gave up on him.
However, A Beautiful Mind, a film purportedly based on Nash's biography, brings up another issue. Nash, played by Russell Crowe, attributes his complete recovery to "the newer antipsychotic drugs." But the biography states that Nash's refused to take drugs after 1970, long before the newer antipsychotics. Indeed, the biographer states that his refusal may have been fortuitous, enabling his complete recovery (1998, p. 353).
The disparity between Nash's biography and the film suggests an interpretation of the film reviewed here. The questionable effectiveness of conventional psychiatric treatments, especially drugs, has given rise to a school of thought known as "anti-psychiatry." Writers like Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, William Glasser, Erving Goffman and many others have suggested that the medicalizing of mental illness has reaffirmed the labeling and rejection of the mentally ill. Some of these writers have hinted at a social, rather than a medical model, one that would resist the temptation to drug, segregate, and shun. But what would such a model look like?
The whole community stood by Lars through his illness, not just a few of his intimates. Seen in this way, the film represents a detailed and explicit moment-by-moment spelling out of the resolution of mental illness in social, rather than medical terms. Perhaps the makers of this film never heard of anti-psychiatry and the social model, but it fits anyway.
