It’s Kind of a Funny Story

It's a Kind of Funny Story

CINELUV RATING: 7 / 10

Over the weekend I got to see an interesting film called It’s Kind of a Funny Story. It tells the story of  Craig (Keir Gilchrist) a teenager who – struggling with suicidal thoughts  – checks himself into psychiatric ward.  What he did not expect is that he would have to spend 5 days in the adults’ psychiatric ward.

As I said the film is interesting, but very early on you start to guess that the plot will show Craig going through some kind of life changing experience. It’s not, I would say, a “true” coming of age film: the psychological changes undergone by Craig during those five days are not complete and thouroghly profound; we would need to see what happened to Craig after the film has ended. Even so, the actors are credible and they give life to a set of atractive characters. So as time goes by you also want to see (you already guess this will happen) what kind of marks Craig will imprint on each patients’ lives.

One dialogue line in the film,  however, made me write this post. At certain point Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) tells a depressive Craig:

The point is, you’re sixteen years old. Someday you won’t be. And in twenty years, if you’re celebrating your daughter’s eighth birthday in a place like this, I swear to god Muqtada and I are going to kick your ass… He not busy bein’ born, is busy dyin’, babe… Believe this.


He not busy bein’ born, is busy dying!
This line is part of a song written in  Bob Dylan called Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). And, in essence, I believe it resumes very well what we – the people that are not affected by serious mental disorders –  should be questioning ourselves every single minute of our lives: am I enough busy being born? If the answer is “no”, than you know what you are busy with… and you should then also be asking yourself: is it time for a change?

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