Review of Benny & Joon (1993) by Joan-Of A — 31 Jan 2010

The Healing Power of Johnny Depp Whimsy.

You may or may not be aware of this, but a fun, fun game mentally ill people play is "diagnose the crazy person in the movie." Oh, sometimes, they make it easy on us--John Nash is schizophrenic, because John Nash is a real person who is also schizophrenic. No challenge there. Sometimes, they clearly have "movie crazy person syndrome," where their symptom profile does not match any known illness. In the middle, we have characters like Juniper "Joon" Pearl (Mary Stuart Masterson), whose symptoms are just specific enough to make for fun discussion--especially because it's not unknown for people to have symptoms from a minor condition in addition to their obvious and major one. (I, for example, was told that I have ADHD and depression--I don't--and possibly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder--I don't.) IMDB suggests that Joon has schizophrenia, or maybe Asperger's, or maybe a panic disorder. Personally, I think the symptoms people see as Asperger's come from the disconnect from the "normal" world a schizophrenic experiences. And, yeah, that's clearly a panic attack she has toward the end, but it's not exactly unheard-of for people with other illnesses--like, oh, bipolar disorder--to have a tendency toward panic attacks as well. So yeah, I'm going with schizophrenia.

Either way, Joon lives with her brother, Benny (Aidan Quinn), in Spokane, Washington. Joon is sick enough so that she's been hospitalized, and she's supposed to be under supervision at all times. (That's very sick, as sick as you can get and be allowed out of the hospital.) Benny has given up pretty much his entire life for Joon--he reacts in astonishment midway through the film at the very concept of a vacation. Her doctor, Dr. Garvey (CCH Pounder), has suggested that a halfway house might be a good idea, and his best friend, Eric (Oliver Platt, actually playing a nice, mellow guy for once), suggests that maybe he can have a life if he does. Joon has scared off yet another housekeeper--she's very intelligent, unlike a lot of other movie crazy people--and Benny's pretty much at the end of his rope. Now, he and his friends play this kind of poker where they bet all the useless crap they have just lying around, and the evening Joon plays, she loses, which means taking home a cousin belonging to Mike (Joe Grifasi), despite the fact that Mike has been told very strictly that you can't bet people. However, Joon loses, and Sam (Johnny Depp) comes home with them.

Sam is harder to diagnose than Joon. There's something wrong with him, perhaps in the autistic spectrum. He's assuredly not retarded--he's clever and funny and far more functional than Joon. Retardation severe enough to cause Sam's problems would be a lot more problematic than a bit of wackiness. Now, of course, "far more functional than Joon" is not really saying all that much. His biggest problem is that, for whatever reason, he is near illiterate. Not stupid, and in many ways not even ignorant. The sky is a different colour in his world, but he doesn't seem unaware of that fact. He isn't terribly worried about being normal, but he does seem to wish he were a little better adapted to life. He says he was thrown out of school for acting the way he does, and it certainly would have been too disruptive to blame the teachers for that. We don't learn, though, if that's the only reason he can't really read or write. Certainly there are no feel-good moments in which we see him learn.

In part, that's because the film is too tight for moments like that. Almost every moment in the film belongs there. Even ones that seem a little throwaway at first, like the first poker sequence, set up characterization and lead into things we learn later. Sam's physical comedy bits, his tributes to Chaplin and Keaton, then lead into his recognition of their waitress at the diner as being "Ruthie Melony, co-star of the [i]Prom Queen Mutilator[/i] with Dick Bebe," because we know he knows movies. And, in fact, it's part of how we know he isn't stupid. We also need to know how sick Joon is, and there are moments to establish that, too, as well as lines which show that she's a very intelligent woman. (Studies indicate that mental illness and intelligence tend to go hand-in-hand.) There is no explanation given for Sam's quasi-Edwardian clothes, but Johnny Depp looks good in quasi-Edwardian clothes, which is probably why he wears them to the Oscars.

Really, what's striking is that most of these people feel real. Sam is a little . . . well, a little Johnny Depp, honestly. However, it's easy to pick bits and pieces of him out of real humans, so that's something, and Sam is more real than Captain Jack or Willy Wonka anyway. However, Ruthie (Julianne Moore) is someone who tried to be somebody famous and has settled for a life wherein she isn't, and she's more embarrassed than pleased about Sam's recognizing her. Okay, Dan Hedaya is playing the same guy he always is, but that's okay; we know Dan Hedaya and could find him in the Real World. Eric wants what's best for Benny. And so forth. But what really gets me is that Joon is, to me at least, believable. There's a little Hollywood to her crazy, but most of it rings true. I've known a few schizophrenics in my day, though none as sick as Joon, and how she acts is very familiar. The panic attack is something I could have had myself, and very nearly have on multiple occasions. And wish upon us all a Benny, we who are sick. He loves Joon. He takes care of her. He resents like hell that he has to, but even putting her in a group home is "it's best for Joon," not "it's best for me." No matter what, he loves her and wants to take care of her. Even healthy people want that, right?