- Joined
- Feb 21, 2007
- Messages
- 3,205
- Reaction score
- 253
Just wanted to see who had seen it, and what you all thought.
I thought it was pure genius. A real cultural breakthrough and what I hope will be a turning point for mental illness stigma. Hopefully this new generation, who lovingly recall this movie from their childhood, will be more emotionally intelligent than their parents...
I loved the early depiction of Joy as almost an overzealous CBT therapist: "Make a list of everything that could possibly go wrong at school today", etc.
I loved the depiction of depression symptoms. Not "sadness", but true depression, as the absence of emotion. Riley began to have sleep disturbances, anhedonia (such as when she lost interest in sliding down the stair rails), concentration difficulty (having trouble focusing on tasks like hockey), and especially the irritability you often see in depressed children.
I loved the "moral"; that sadness is necessary and useful. That a healthy person can consolidate all their emotions. That memories can share multiple emotions simultaneously.
It was subtle, but I loved how the depicted different "primary" emotions in different people. Riley's "core emotion" was Joy. Her mother's was Sadness. Her father's was Anger. You could see how, as Riley became more depressed in the absence of Joy, she tried on other emotions in the "leadership role" and eventually nearly settled on Anger in the driver's seat. The popular girl in the credits sequence was driven by fear. The snobby pizza girl was Disgust. The bus driver was Anger. Very nice.
Overall, the way they managed to portray all this, in a manner that almost anyone from ages 5 to 95 can understand, in an entertaining and heartwarming story, was absolutely brilliant, and marks it as one of my favorite movies of all time. And for our field, one of the most important.
Thoughts?
I thought it was pure genius. A real cultural breakthrough and what I hope will be a turning point for mental illness stigma. Hopefully this new generation, who lovingly recall this movie from their childhood, will be more emotionally intelligent than their parents...
I loved the early depiction of Joy as almost an overzealous CBT therapist: "Make a list of everything that could possibly go wrong at school today", etc.
I loved the depiction of depression symptoms. Not "sadness", but true depression, as the absence of emotion. Riley began to have sleep disturbances, anhedonia (such as when she lost interest in sliding down the stair rails), concentration difficulty (having trouble focusing on tasks like hockey), and especially the irritability you often see in depressed children.
I loved the "moral"; that sadness is necessary and useful. That a healthy person can consolidate all their emotions. That memories can share multiple emotions simultaneously.
It was subtle, but I loved how the depicted different "primary" emotions in different people. Riley's "core emotion" was Joy. Her mother's was Sadness. Her father's was Anger. You could see how, as Riley became more depressed in the absence of Joy, she tried on other emotions in the "leadership role" and eventually nearly settled on Anger in the driver's seat. The popular girl in the credits sequence was driven by fear. The snobby pizza girl was Disgust. The bus driver was Anger. Very nice.
Overall, the way they managed to portray all this, in a manner that almost anyone from ages 5 to 95 can understand, in an entertaining and heartwarming story, was absolutely brilliant, and marks it as one of my favorite movies of all time. And for our field, one of the most important.
Thoughts?
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