The Schizophrenia Take

This film is true art. As in all art, it can be interpretted in more than one way, or even dismissed and scoffed at. My compliments to missperea's post of her husband's interpretation. I offer the following alternative interpretation for your consideration:

This film presents an offbeat story which thrusts us viewers into the tortured, schizoid mind of Julia Baker. It is a helter-skelter ride from an overstressed working mother in Texas to the shattered person she becomes, alone and undone by her hallucinations atop a New York highrise.

Julia Baker at first has horrible headaches and faints in the face of shrill, stessful, untennable moments in her life. In these moments schiztophrenia gets a toe-hold on her mind. She dreams repeatedly, almost vividly of a particular room she has never actually seen. These visions may offer her diversion and relief from her impossible-to-handle life. She is at her wit's end. And this room seems like THE answer to everything. But there is a deeper disconnect going on here than such superficial reasonings we might infer.

So she builds a belief that an actual entity is directing her to find this room and here salvation. She convinces herself she must follow these visions at all costs. It gives meaning, a sense of purpose, a goal and a way out, yes. But mostly it just makes unconvoluted sense to her. She will stop at nothing to attain the nervana she imagines awaits for her in the room. She gives in to her madness.

So she is compelled and obsessed to find this large, spacious "room" she dreams of, not too unlike the visions and compulsions of the characters in "Encounters of the Third Kind". She abandons her family, her life, even her survival instinct to follow cryptic, hallucinated clues she believes are guiding her to this "room".

It all ends badly with her failure to find the room, despite all of the hallucinated clues guiding her and obstacles she overcame. She had searched every room she could access in the building she had lead herself to. She is frantic attop the highrise, having searched all the other levels for the room. She runs out of rooms and stops to peer over the roof's edge. This is the end of her fruitless journey.

Or is it fruitless? She slumps down away from the edge and hallucinates rapid fire images of the room. Then she is rewarded with a blurred, double-visioned hallucination, which whisks her (and us) away, looking down at something, who knows what, in broad daylight, very close up. The blurred vision continues to look down from a perspective spinning upward into space. (This alone was worth the price of the film rental.) In her mind, she has found the room.

In reality she is a totally exhausted schitzophrenic atop a highrise at night. I imagine soon she will be some kind of statisic, whether taking her own life, or as a victim of the streets or becoming a dependent of the state of New York.

It may be very unsettling for us to be sent on this schizophrenic journey way out of reality. But it is a masterful inside, experiential view of schizophrenia, apart from actually being schizophrenic. It is totally absorbing. I hope you checked your reality at the door before watching this. We had no idea what we were in for, did we?

In conclusion, here with a quote from a helpguide.com article on "What Is Schizophrenia":

"Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects the way a person acts, thinks, and sees the world. People with schizophrenia have an altered perception of reality, often a significant loss of contact with reality. They may see or hear things that don't exist, speak in strange or confusing ways, believe that others are trying to harm them, or feel like they're being constantly watched. With such a blurred line between the real and the imaginary, schizophrenia makes it difficult—even frightening—to negotiate the activities of daily life. In response, people with schizophrenia may withdraw from the outside world or act out in confusion and fear."