Mark Reviews Movies: WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 20, 2020

In depicting mental illness with thoughtfulness, Words on Bathroom Walls does so much right that its clichéd and/or questionable elements don't seem to matter. The foundation of Thor Freudenthal's film, adapted from Julia Walton's novel, is seeing the world through the eyes of Adam (Charlie Plummer), a teenager diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Nick Naveda's screenplay doesn't exploit the condition for some kind of edgy coming-of-age tale (although it is about Adam figuring out his new and future life) or tragic romance (although there is a love story here). It tries to make us understand, in clear terms and with only a few compromises, what life has become for this young man.

One of the film's strengths is how straightforward it is. It doesn't attempt to hide or romanticize Adam's condition. As Adam speaks to an unseen psychiatrist (a subtly wise move that avoids getting caught up in psychoanalysis and puts us in the position of the listener), we learn a bit about his past. His father left, leaving Adam to be raised by his mother Beth (Molly Parker).

In the aftermath, Adam learns how to cook, seeing it as his contribution to the home, and becomes quite skilled, hoping that he can attend culinary school after graduating high school. Meanwhile, the mother starts dating Paul (Walton Goggins), who moves in with the family, and immediately, Adam is suspicious of the man.

As for his mental condition, it all starts with some problems with his vision. He begins hallucinating voices, speaking as a whisper that becomes progressively louder, and people, who appear and disappear at first. During a classroom science experiment, the voices and the visions suddenly become loud and violent. The incident finally leads to a proper diagnosis of schizophrenia and to his expulsion from school, with only a semester remaining before graduation.

It's around this point that the story introduces the visual and dramatic representations of Adam's condition. They appear, not only as seeing distorted or invented visions, but also as personas.

Rebecca (AnnaSophia Robb) is a New Age woman with a calm demeanor and a pleasant tone, always assuring Adam that things will be fine and that he should trust the people who obviously care for him. Joaquin (Devon Bostick) is like the horny comic relief in a teenage sex comedy. The Bodyguard (Lobo Sebastian), who carries a bat and a smokes a cigarillo, is there to protect him from perceived harm. Most prevalent is a booming voice coming out of the shadows, voicing his darkest and most despairing thoughts.

The presence of these imagined characters, obviously, is a kind of gimmick. What's admirable is how little they actually figure into the story (They may be personas, but the filmmakers don't transform them into actual characters, who form vital bonds with Adam). There's also a deliberate and well-communicated choice that everything said and done by these imagined figures comes from Adam's own thoughts.

To Adam, all of this seems like the end of his life. Beth and Paul, though, get him enrollment at Catholic high school under a couple of conditions: Adam has to maintain good grades, and he has to participate in a trial for an experimental drug. None of the other assorted cocktails of medication has worked before, but Adam's skepticism is overcome by wanting to get closer to Maya (Taylor Russell), the school's clever and charming presumptive valedictorian. He doesn't want anyone at his new school, especially her, to learn about his illness, lest everyone looks at him as if he's no more than the personification of his condition.

With the introduction of Maya, one might reasonably worry that the story will change course, that the tone might become softer, and that the central conflict will be about this way of potential romance. Basically, the immediate fear is that the film will compromise, framing mental illness, not as an all-encompassing and complex challenge to Adam's life, but as the simplified obstacle in a manipulative love story.

To its considerable credit, the film doesn't sway in its goals. This story remains about Adam, as the voices continue, the medication begins to work, and he's confronted with a new challenge—the side effects, which make everyday living almost as difficult, albeit in different ways, as experiencing the symptoms of his condition. There's a concerted effort, again, not to make his eventual decision to stop taking the pills the result of missing his imaginary friends or some similarly sentimentalized concept.

We do, though, also get a sweet romance in the process, but even that story, anchored by Russell's compassionate performance and presence, is ultimately a piece of the film's bigger point. Maya is just one of many who do, as Adam desperately wants, see Adam as more than just a disease.

There's his mother, of course, and some of the film's most heartbreaking scenes come when the symptoms of Adam's condition turn his thoughts against her. As for Paul, the filmmakers play a subtle trick with perspective, making us see the man from Adam's suspicions, and the revelation of the character's true self is a truly affecting moment. A final, less constant presence comes in the personage of the school's priest, played by Andy Garcia, who's pragmatic in his advice—and happier that someone is actually listening to it.

To be clear, the film certainly stumbles in certain ways. While Adam's condition is never played as a joke, the scenes featuring those imagined figures often rely on humor, which gets the presentation a little too close to jokiness for comfort. A climactic Big Speech is about as predictable and simplistic as it sounds for this material. It really doesn't matter too much, because Words on Bathroom Walls treats mental illness with respect, honesty, and, above all else, empathy.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Book

Buy the Book (Kindle Edition)