Opium: Diary of a Madwoman

Directed by Janos Szasz

Review by Roberto Azula

Opium: Diary of a Madwoman is one of the most difficult, but one of the most rewarding films I’ve ever seen. It is a heavy piece of work, but it never drives you away. Rather, like lunatic asylum inmate Gizella (an astonishing Kristi Stubo), you’ll also find yourself caged and trapped in a prison run by sadistic doctors and nuns. Fortunately, Opium is not a film that revels in sadism. Rather, it is unabashedly romantic film about reckless humanity and misguided compassion.

The story is harrowing, to say the least. It is 1913, where the mentally ill are still housed and treated like animals, and psychology has yet to progress much further than the medieval era. A new doctor arrives with newfangled ideas of analyzing the patients’ words and dreams, using image associations, and actually treating the patients with compassion. But Dr. Brenner (Ulrich Thomsen) is hardly a paragon of medical profession, and be rest assured that Opium is no Patch Adams. Dr. Brenner is an opium addict, and he has the rather unseemly habit of having sex with his patients.

The onscreen chemistry between Dr. Brenner and Gizella, though fairly twisted, is electric and convincing.  Dr. Brenner is a frustrated writer, and when he sees Gizella writing furiously in her diary, he sees a fellow writer filled with the inspiration that he so desires. And though Dr. Brenner is usually coked to the gills with opium, but he is practically a saint compared to the doctors and the nuns who continually torment the patients.

The themes of Opium, however, run much deeper than the simplistic platitudes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is a shocking, courageous film that delves deep into the all-consuming and maddening nature of inspiration and art. Beautifully shot and with an uncompromising script, Opium: Diary of a Madwoman is my personal pick of the best film of Seattle International Film Festival.