Mad to Be Normal (2018)

Ronnie Laing was an actual doctor who ran Kingsley Hall from 1965-70, a home for people who would usually be parked in asylums. His revolutionary idea was to leave them unmedicated and free to do as they pleased -- working out their sanity in their own way and in their own time. It seems so much kinder than the time's alternatives, for sure. But I was also fairly skeptical of whether I could trust this film as being at all close to actuality.

The film's throughline is of Laing's relationship with a smitten psychology student, who calls him up one day and, in no time, has become his live-in girlfriend. She's devoted and hopelessly in love, but that infatuation fades when she becomes a mother and realizes that he will never prefer her and his son to his patients. This storyline and girlfriend character is fiction -- which makes the entire movie useless.

This was only on my list because David Tennant stars as Laing. While it was an OK watch, I just don't get the point of adding a pretend romance to a film as rich with characters as this one. I'm sure I would've been at least as interested without it.

C+