With Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin and the forthcoming SXSW occupying most of the current film festival headlines, let’s not forget that in a couple of weeks Glasgow will be hosting their own big movie event. And even more, they’ll have the World Premiere of “Mad To Be Normal.”
Starring David Tennant, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon, and Gabriel Bryne, the film seems to have a slight “Awakenings“-esque vibe, following Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who bucked medical conventions of his time, offering his own unique solutions to patients who weren’t being adequately served by the system. Here’s the official synopsis:
There was no more charismatic or controversial a figure during the swinging ’60s than Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing. Dubbed “the white Martin Luther King” and the “high priest of anti-psychiatry”, Laing was as famous as Dylan. In 1965, he established Kingsley Hall in East London as a medication-free community for those seriously affected by schizophrenia. His methods, which involved experimenting with LSD on his patients and practicing a form of self-healing known as metanoia, flew in the face of a medical establishment that considered Laing a dangerous radical. Mad To Be Normal offers a powerful account of Laing’s Kingsley Hall experiment with a stunning performance from David Tennant that truly gets under the skin of an utterly compelling figure. Tennant’s nuanced, complex work conveys a sense of Laing’s immense personal charm and the combination of intelligence and arrogance that made him equally revered and reviled. The film also captures the darker side of a mercurial man who rarely made it easy for those who dared to get close to him, especially his lover Angie (Elisabeth Moss). A magnificent ensemble cast includes heartrending performances from Michael Gambon and Gabriel Byrne.
“Mad To Be Normal” will open in the spring in the U.K., there’s no U.S. date yet. Check out the trailer below. [Empire]
