Shock Corridor

This is a whole twilight zone episode without the supernatural apparitions or gothic elements. It’s the malaise of society that blurs the line distinguishing the individuals with poor mental hygiene and the apt men of competence. Even though being stolid was not my spirit’s forte, I especially cannot and will not try to be completely objective with this; this was so gravely grim, i cried watching this movie. First, the dreams are in color. Think about that for a moment, as the monotone film itself is the given medium. In my head I sensed a juxtaposition that was executed in order to harness dual meaning in the black and white, and also the multicolor dreams. The colors make the reveries vivid albeit they are not accurate to the dreamer’s purportedly pertaining anecdotes. This is what transpires in their head. If you think this is a symptom of an oddball, you are at least acute: they indeed play a fictional character in their imagination and confuse reality. To borrow the bard’s wisdom-nugget, the world has become the stage to them to portray their charade upon. They are starkly hopeless in which no irrefutable panacea can combat the incorrigible futility of it all. The film also chides the archetype of an amoral despot the media plays. It’s akin to a naked wolf, who has long abandoned the wool clothing, if you think sympathy is warm. That’s not the heat the leeches seek. The protagonist deceives the system through the ward’s entrance to “crack the yarn” to a degree no other reporter will be able to seek and seize. Now, if you had an ailment, entailing an empirical evidence such as a wound, you would be regarded injured, as sure as eggs are eggs. However the mind’s illness is a tier superior on the grand hierarchy of complexity if you will. A concrete diagnosis is more arbitrary to gain clarity out of in this scenario. This flaw has not made a significant amelioration in modern times, and the suffering of patients who don’t know what eats them persists forth as our knowledge is stagnant on most dreadful stasis. The social perception in the pertaining era had been labeling the owners of a “broken” mind as a nonetheless burden on the group. The mentality ultimately exceeded rejecting the unstable individuals as outcasts and pariahs, where the ward was their private ghetto or slum. The introduced characters in the ward setting are in abject failure of comprehension in their situation, to the point where a respective surrender to be a sound individual is what they symbolize.