Family Life

Family Life (1971) was directed by Ken Loach.

The film stars Sandy Ratcliff as Janice Baildon. Janice is a young woman who has some emotional problems. She's standing at the brink of a long slide downwards. Briefly, a caring physician intervenes, but after that she's on her own.

There are no real villains in this movie, in the sense of people who know what they're doing is wrong, and do it anyway. Everyone--her parents, her psychiatrists--are convinced that what they are doing is right.

That is the paradox of this film--well-meaning people are hurting Janice without recognizing what they are doing.

Sadly, almost 50 years later, psychiatry hasn't made that much progress. True, there are many new medications, and there are many new non-medication approaches, but there hasn't been a real breakthrough. People like Janice might find themselves in the same situation, with the same bad consequences.

We saw this film on the small screen, where it worked well. The movie has a very strong IMDb rating of7.7. I think it's even better than that.