Email | Print

A friend and I went to see a fictional German film with subtitles about a young man's schizophrenia at the New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art. In this film "The White Sound," director Hans Weingartner has us follow the life of Lukas (Daniel Bruhl) from normalcy to the onset of his schizophrenia and into the depths of his illness. For my friend and I, it brought back horrible memories of being ill with this dreadful disease.

There are a number of possible reasons for Lukas' schizophrenia to manifest itself. He is moving into a large city where he has to fit in and start a new life. Moving in with his sister Kati (Anabelle Lachatte) and her boyfriend Jochen (Patrick Joswig) does not help matters since they like to smoke pot, drink and use hallucinogenic substances, of which Lukas partakes. I know from personal experience that drugs and alcohol only exacerbate symptoms.

Socially awkward, the first thing he says to a girl at a party is, "Shall we do something sometime?" Surprisingly, she agrees and Lukas plans to see a movie with her. Unfortunately the movie is not playing that night and Lukas throws a paranoid fit at the ticket lady, believing she was holding back the tickets for some reason. Though he does not hurt anyone, his fit is violent and he scares away the girl. This is a sign that mentally he is breaking down.

After a day spent eating psilocybin mushrooms with Kati and Jochen, Lukas descends further into mental illness. On their way home, he becomes very troubled by Kati's reckless driving, which precipitates something even worse: he begins hearing voices for the first time. These voices push Lukas deeper into paranoia. One voice seems to be coming from his sister, wishing that he were never born and stating that he is responsible for their parents' deaths. Voices seem to be coming from Jochen too, calling him names. The voices are very realistic, generating memories of my own psychosis as well as my friend's. We held hands to comfort ourselves during this scene. In typical uneducated fashion, Jochen later tells Lukas that it is just a bad "trip" or that the mushrooms are at fault for his psychosis.

Needless to say, Lukas' illness gets worse with a constant barrage of voices. He winds up in the mental hospital where he receives the dreadful diagnosis of schizophrenia. We see Kati go through a period of denial over her brother's illness. The first thing she does when Lukas returns from the hospital is make him find a mainstream job. That is not what he needs. He needs a psychiatrist and therapy as well as support from his peers and family.

For a time, things seem fine as Lukas is compliant with his medication and has a normal routine. But his hold on sanity is tremulous at best. After Jochen questions his need for the medication, Lukas flushes his pills down the toilet and shortly thereafter relapses. I know this is a realistic scenario since I also relapsed, refusing to take medication because, like Lukas, I thought it would "soften my brain." Weingartner did years of research into the lives of schizophrenics before making this film and the result is an accurate portrayal of the life and times of a schizophrenic. Denial on the part of the ill person and his or her family is no different in Germany than it is in the U.S. and the result is the same: a family in turmoil.

The reason the movie is called the White Sound is romantic in a way. According to the movie, listening to the white sound can drive a man insane or can make an already insane man sane. Lukas finds solace from his illness by searching for the white sound in running water and lapping ocean waves. The ending to the movie is open-ended as we see Lukas, a runaway, staring at the ocean waves, lost in the white sound. Personally, I would rather see an ending where Lukas is back in treatment with a normal routine, receiving peer support from fellow consumers, support from clinicians and from his family as he begins the difficult road toward recovery.