MAD?

Mad begins with Miriam Kohen being admitted to a geriatric mental health facility - against her will. Miriam must spend 28 days under evaluation to determine whether she is mentally fit to take care of herself and by proxy her property. Miriam, however, doesn’t believe this is about her best interest. Instead, she’s convinced her son and neighbors are conspiring to take control of her property for their own purposes. Immediately upon entering the hospital, the viewer understands that this is no normal place of medicine. From the murals on the walls to the staff’s behavior, one thing is clear: this is a world beyond reality.For Miriam, the hospital is a total affront to her extreme Libertarian views. She rails against the system that put her in such a place and everyone in it, starting with her roommate Judy. The carnivalesque hospital is a tour of Miriam’s fixations and fantasies. Attracted to sex and violence, she has dark dreams and provokes her fellow patients and staff with taunts. At the same time, her imprisonment in the medical facility is a manifestation of her greatest fear: the loss of control. The hospital is a metaphor for the crushing conformity required by culture, in which the head physician Dr. Bono literally is a killer. Miriam furiously tries to regain her agency by continuing to make art, settling for the crayons the hospital provides over her oil paints left at home. (Nashville Film Festival)