Why are my favourite films such devastating emotional turmoil wrecks? Girl, Interrupted (1999), The Virgin Suicides (1999), Black Swan (2010), Gone Girl (2014), and Tàr (2022) were cinematic masterpieces that shifted my perspectives on life.
July 21, 2025. Written by Ellen Effy Su.
New York, NY— Most people assume certain characteristics are inherently immoral, so distasteful that they do not care to learn anything more about how deeply intrinsic and multidimensional a flawed character is. It is the primary reason why average people choose to place labels on characters when they do not know them at all. This is why some people overlook the impact of these films.
We identify characters as shallow, selfish, self-absorbed, self-serving, and malicious, rather than see their hyper-independence and desire to be alone as an effect of prolonged childhood trauma. We perceive people by a standard of what we know.
Truthfully, all characters are multifaceted, just like each person we meet is a recollection of someone we love, hate, dislike, or respect. We are all mirrorballs of who we know and what we have endured in life.
The depressed young women who are the stars of Girl, Interrupted, The Virgin Suicides, Black Swan, and Gone Girl are reminiscent of my character flaws.
As a child, my desire to be perfect at everything from dance to tennis to skiing, and my dream of reclaiming our familial estate, drove me insane.
I wanted the unattainable as a little girl: to buy back my childhood condo, to recollect my family’s lost heirlooms and former homes throughout southern China, and to own first editions of Voltaire novels. The only thing I ever cared about was competing with my peers, cousins, and friends. I detested distractions. I preferred solitude.
I once blamed my grandparents for the transcendental generational trauma.
If only my grandmother loved my mother the way she loved my uncle. Life could have been different.
Maybe I would not have become a marionette doll to propel my mother’s ambition, to placate my eternally depressed father, to impress my hypercritical, apathetic grandparents who thought I needed complicit discipline to fear them instead of fostering a loving relationship with them, or a childish dilettante who routinely utilised playing dumb as a protection tactic from being outcasted.
We shan’t spend time rummaging through closed loopholes of the past to search for answers because we must live in the present. We live for today.
Don’t ruin a good morning because of yesterday’s bad morning. I learned that when I was five, but I began practising what I preach at fifteen.
I saw pieces of myself in Nina’s character in Black Swan. Her crippling anxiety, lack of close friends, dark desire for perfection in ballet, precision, grace, and compulsive personality reminded me of what I was on the path toward. It scared me. It awakened the dimmed light in me and encouraged me to forge, foster, and cherish my friendships and relationships.
I saw the interior of psych wards through the film Girl, Interrupted. The parallels between the scenes in Girl, Interrupted and the written scenes in Prozac Nation recalled my toxic behaviour and reminded me how I destroyed my relationships by unleashing my worst without a care for the effect. Words leave an impact. When they go low, choose to rise.
To me, I had to win because they went after my greatest love: education. Slut shaming, physical abuse, psychological warfare of spreading lies to attack my meticulously curated reputation, and the constant addition of new false rumours... The vicious methods of calculated ambush by teenage boys and girls should be studied.
Does a scorpion sting when fighting back?
There are people out there in the world who think I am homophobic because of words spoken by these rotten eggs. My first kiss was with a girl. Do you have a problem with my lips?
These life-changing films helped me realize there are many worse places to be than middle or high school. I adapted my ever-evolving beliefs to metamorphose into the person I am today. I ditched my belief in purity culture after I was groped as a teenager. I needed to feel clean in my body again, so I stopped believing I was dirty. I once scrubbed myself raw for hours, lingering in my steaming or freezing showers. The wasteful luxury of bathing clinically cleared my sullied skin and mind.
Amy in Gone Girl taught me to stop chasing men who are not in love or even “in like” with me. Once a person learns to honour herself, she will not seek validation from others. True confidence is quiet. The chosen pose for a confident woman is not a hand on the side hip. The answer to life is to remain wary, not judgmental. Test the water before getting in. Amy went feral, submerging herself into an unnecessary battle to get her husband back.
Anything to have her mediocre spouse standing next to her again! Dramatic, theatrical, and understandably selfish, Amy reminds us of our worst traits. Yes, I sympathise with Amy. Yes, I know why she did it. I also think she wasted her effort. She could have fallen in love with someone else, had children with him, and made new friends.
Real life becomes true crime documentaries if we imitate what we see on television. Psychological thrillers are thought-provoking, expansive, and are not meant to be embodied by functional members of society.
I once said I would never drive a Honda. A girl next to me replied, “Wow, you’re spoiled.” I took offense to that because I viewed Honda vehicles as unreliable pieces of crap, constantly stuck on the sides of roads. I did not say it to look down on people who can only afford to drive a Honda, but she perceived it that way. I doubt Simone will ever read my work. I think about her rarely.
Clearing the air to bask in my enlightenment. I wish we did this sooner. I wish I spoke up at the time. I wish I had softened my words to broker peace and not offend.
I watched The Virgin Suicides at age eleven, before I read the book. I read it over and over again at age thirteen, the most difficult year of my life. My chain of minimized self-harm began around then: bruising, unexplained superficial cuts, and pulling out my hair by the root. It is one of the only films I have ever watched without reading the novel first.
The Lisbon sisters and their interactions evoked the depravity of degenerates in our society. It presented the perverse thinking of teenage boys and men who never grew up from their fantasies of belittling girls and women who rejected them or never looked at them with adoration.
How do I date men when I dislike most men? Somebody should write a how-to guide for me. Most men are lustful creatures, on the prowl for a younger, fitter model unless they are head over heels in love with their spouses.
The only good men I knew were my tennis and swim coaches, ballet teachers, a select few of my school teachers, tour guides, two of my uncles, and a select few of my male classmates, who showed me empathetic grace despite my tainted tendency to revolt against conformity. They nurtured my fundamental ideas: Wimbledon was the true World Cup; Tchaikovsky, Czerny, and Clementi were classical music heroes; and knowledge was true power. I knew the capitals of all 195 countries in the world, how many wives King Henry VIII had, and how crack cocaine was formulated, yet I did not know how to maintain a long-term relationship.
God, I miss naivety. I wish navigating the world were as simplistic as memorizing facts.
I met good men like the doctors I saw regularly, and my physical therapist, who helped me recover from my fractured left tibia. I never complained about my pain to my doctors, but I did complain to my teenage peers. How daft of me to expect their consolation when all they did was add insult to injury. How dense of me to let my guard down. I had forgotten how unkind this society is to the disabled, especially my peers who poked fun at my inability to walk during my most vulnerable time.
Lydia Tàr from Tàr showed me the long-lasting effects of bitter resentment. We make a conscious choice to better ourselves by reacting differently to new situations. Lydia displayed her brutalist attitude and did not hold back from speaking hate into existence. The hate must transform into love, or it will erase the good. She lost her job and her spouse because she was incapable of controlling her anger.
There is a way to speak to children and others, and Lydia did not learn from her grievances.
People expect more from those they view as brilliant. However, excellent individuals are expected to be graceful despite any complexities. Castles crumble, tides change, people fade to dust, and grief does not feel right to let go of once one grows accustomed to it. It is pertinent to remember there was love before there was hate.
I have never felt this free. I want to thank the filmmakers, actresses, and production crews behind these five films. I am a twenty-one-year-old woman, a professional working in the fashion media industry. I am prepared to pursue my maximalist fashionista dream.
Someday in the far future, I hope to create a caring family where my children can happily read Victor Hugo on the living room swing, and not know of the sacrifice I gave in my youth for them to live the childhood I dreamt of. I hope their laughter echoes off the pristine marble floor tiles, and their jubilant fingers dance across the keys of the Bøsendorfer grand. I hope they never know how it feels to downgrade lifestyles because I do not think I can survive a second time around.
Girl, Interrupted, The Virgin Suicides, Black Swan, Gone Girl, and Tàr revitalized my zest for life, fueled my fervor to better myself, and strengthened my keenness for the pursuit of positivity. Women and men reshaped my perception of society. I smile at strangers now because I know small acts of kindness could lighten someone’s day.
I look directly at my Porcelanosa mirror now. I used to look directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. Films visualise human emotions for the world to examine. Life is a revolving door, until I choose to open a new door. Speak positive affirmations into existence, for it forces a resolution, rather than a limiting belief.