ZOLOFT IS NOT THE MEDICINE IN SIDE EFFECTS
Hitchockian thrillers are very few nowadays and must be treasured. Similar to the surprise ending in Shutter Island(2010), the film Side Effects exploits someone’s mental illness to trap filmviewers into the wrong mindset. In this case, Emily Taylor (played by Rooney Mara), while waiting for her husband to be released from prison for several years, has been seeing psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Siebert (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones). After her husband returns home, however, she switches to the care of psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks (played by Jude Law), presumably on a tip from someone at work that he is particularly competent and will prescribe a medicine in a clinical trial. A subplot about the side effects of medicines for depression then pretends to be the main plot as three dramatic events occur: Emily slams her car into the wall of a garage, nearly steps in front of a New York subway, and stabs her husband, leaving him for dead. On trial for murder, she claims that she was delirious in the first two incidents and has no memory of the third. The judge accepts a verdict of guilty by reason of insanity and commits her to a state mental institution. Dr. Banks, meanwhile, is derided in the press as the “pill killer,” so his position in a psychiatric firm is in jeopardy. He becomes so obsessed about the case, which has ruined his career, that his wife and son leave him. Trying to clear his name, he discovers that no such person at Emily’s work made the referral. Filmviewers will doubtless wonder (as I did) how the prosecution was able to find for testimony the very same subway officer who tried to save Emily from getting too close to the track, but that does not openly surprise Dr. Banks. In any case, this review will not supply spoilers, such as a gap in the plot, out of respect for director Steven Soderbergh and all those who would try to emulate Hitchcock. MH