Some voices

A Dragon Pictures production for British Screen/FilmFour
At selected cinemas nationwide
Rating: 4/4

The most important point to make about Some Voices is that it works as a film, and a technically accomplished one at that. Patients and health profession. als will have little to complain about - its central character, Ray (Daniel Craig), has schizophrenia, but this is a sensitive film, and its appeal goes beyond any armchair diagnostics.

The film begins with Ray's release from the grim asylum. He is collected by his café-owning brother Pete (David Morrissey), who fixates on Ray's tablets rather than discussing his illness. As in every "psychiatry film," once we read the chlorpromazine label on the bottle, we know that non-compliance and relapse are bound to follow. This cliché aside, the film is refreshing in its avoidance of the standard formulas. Gone are the psycho-killer, pathetic, or "crazy funny guy" stereotypes, and there is only one reference, from Pete, to the "pull yourself together" school of psychotherapy. There is no blaming, no mental illness as metaphor, no psychiatry bashing, and - although a romance lies at its core - there is none of the usual message that "love is better than tablets."

One of the film's strengths is its depiction of Ray's descent into perplexity and paranoia, with poorly formed auditory hallucinations, which he describes as his ghosts. The use of sound is particularly effective, and the film makers have made full use of the Dolby digital soundtrack. The film is full of colour and recurring symbolism. Its background is a busy, soulless London, where innocent street life feeds into Pete's frustrations and Ray's paranoia.

Both Craig and Morrissey give fine central performances. Craig plays Ray as complex and troubled, but believable at all times, while for most of the film Morrissey's angst as Ray's carer makes him the more symptomatic of the two brothers. Food is used as a motif to signal aspects of Ray's illness or his relationship to others. At one point, in Pete's cafe, Ray grinds his tablets on to customers' pizzas, explaining that the pizzas are "just what the doctor ordered." In another scene, Pete uses frantic chopping and garnishing as a technique to woo waitress Mandy (Julie Graham), while a cookery lesson defines the brothers' maturing relationship. Kelly MacDonald is impressive as Laura, the object of Ray's affection. Their relationship builds slowly, and her trust in Ray, who has not told her he has been ill, never seems misplaced. As such, the film serves as an antidote to the 1998 saccharine movie Shine, in which the central character's history was rewritten to portray him as rescued by love.

Some Voices is a welcome, thoughtful, and engaging film - at last, a film that rises above the usual dross of mental illness movies.

Peter Byrne, senior lecturer in psychiatry, University of Kent at Canterbury


studentBMJ 2000;08:395-434 November ISSN 0966-6494