Director: Jane Campion
Writers: Janet Frame, Laura Jones
Photography: Stuart Dryburth
Music: Don McGlashan
Editor: Veronika Jenet
Cast: Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, Iris Churn, Kevin J. Wilson, Melina Bernecker, Glynis Angell, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, Colin McColl, David Letch
I saw this picture when it was new in 1990 and loved it so much that I bought a one-volume of the Janet Frame memoirs on which it is based. Typically enough, I have been toting it around ever since and still haven’t read it. But the movie, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Power of the Dog), still looked pretty darned good to me. It was created originally as a TV miniseries with three parts of about 50 minutes each, suitable for one-hour programming. The three parts, presented here as a “trilogy,” touch on Frame’s childhood, teenage, and adult years (from her memoirs, respectively, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City).
Frame was born in 1924 in New Zealand and grew up at a time and in a place where mental illness was poorly understood. She was withdrawn, introverted, and shy, lost in the fairy tales, poetry, and stories she started reading and writing from a young age. Eventually, as a young adult training to be a teacher, she had a breakdown when an inspector visited her classroom. One thing led to another and then she was diagnosed (incorrectly) as schizophrenic, given electroshock treatments into the 1950s when the treatment was not understood well but administered frequently, and spent some eight years in and out of institutions, often returning voluntarily. An Angel at My Table tells much the whole sad and alarming story (albeit one with a happy ending).
I saw this picture when it was new in 1990 and loved it so much that I bought a one-volume of the Janet Frame memoirs on which it is based. Typically enough, I have been toting it around ever since and still haven’t read it. But the movie, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, Holy Smoke, The Power of the Dog), still looked pretty darned good to me. It was created originally as a TV miniseries with three parts of about 50 minutes each, suitable for one-hour programming. The three parts, presented here as a “trilogy,” touch on Frame’s childhood, teenage, and adult years (from her memoirs, respectively, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table, and The Envoy From Mirror City).
Frame was born in 1924 in New Zealand and grew up at a time and in a place where mental illness was poorly understood. She was withdrawn, introverted, and shy, lost in the fairy tales, poetry, and stories she started reading and writing from a young age. Eventually, as a young adult training to be a teacher, she had a breakdown when an inspector visited her classroom. One thing led to another and then she was diagnosed (incorrectly) as schizophrenic, given electroshock treatments into the 1950s when the treatment was not understood well but administered frequently, and spent some eight years in and out of institutions, often returning voluntarily. An Angel at My Table tells much the whole sad and alarming story (albeit one with a happy ending).
