NUTS

I first saw "Nuts", starring Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss in the theater.  It was 1987.  I was a junior in high school.  I went with my friend from school, "S", and she didn't really want to see it.  I talked her into it, and I think she hated it.  She watched with her arms crossed and she didn't want to talk about the movie afterwards.  Perhaps it was because we were "good, Christian girls" and we had just seen a movie about a high-end prostitute who was going through a competency trial to see if she were sane enough to stand trial for killing one of her clients.  Fair enough.  The movie made "S" uncomfortable.  Sorry about that, sister, but the movie changed me.  It changed my perception of what a good movie could be.  And I definitely never thought about Barbra Streisand the same way again.

I watched the movie last week.  I just finished watching it again, with Barbra's commentary overdubbed.  First of all, I love courtroom movies.  I can watch "A Few Good Men" a few times a year.  Something about the procedure and the law and the games that are played to make those laws fit each players' agendas just fascinates me. 

I didn't know Barbra had co-produced the movie.  In fact, her name wasn't in the credits for doing so, but I found out in the commentary that she had.  In fact she produced Yentl too.  She does tons of research before making a movie.  She interviews people and goes places her character has gone and reads and puts herself into their shoes the best she can. She visited mental hospitals and noticed that some of the doctors were even more spun than the patients. She talks about sexual child abuse, how prevalent it is.  Back in the 80's, the numbers were appallingly high.  She did the overdub just a few years ago.  She mentioned that the numbers have probably gone up since then.  They probably have.

"You don't believe your mother loves you?" asks the prosecuting lawyer. 

 "God, of course she loves me." replies Claudia.  "You stand up here and ask, 'Do you love your daughter?' and she says, 'Yes, I love my daughter', and you think you're asked something real?  And she thinks she said something real?  You think because you toss this word 'love' around like a Frisbee we're all gonna get warm and runny?  No.  Sometimes people love you so much . . . their love is like a goddamn gun that keeps firing straight into your head.  They love you so much you go right into a hospital.  Right, mama?"

"I didn't know", says her mother, referring to the fact that Claudia's stepfather had been molesting her for years.

"No, you didn't want to know."

"I'm a little confused.  Do you love your mother?" asks the lawyer.

"Of course I love her.  So what."

This movie is about how honesty can make people squirm.  People like to believe what makes them feel comfortable with the world around them.  We like to put people in boxes.  To really get under their skin and make them tick takes a lot of time and effort and most of us are too busy dealing with our own feelings and thoughts to dwell on what someone has gone through and why they react to life's situations like they do. 

"We're many shades of grey and we cheat ourselves with all these labels."  --Barbra Streisand

We see the person talking to themself as they walk down the street and our instinct is to walk on the other side of the street.  We blindly trust the doctors and psychiatrists and other "professionals" as being sane people who "must have" our own best interests at heart, not bothering to think that they may be filled with their own inconsistencies and fallibility. 

This link shows one of my favorite parts of the movie, when Claudia is telling the court that she won't be "nuts" for any of them.  It's a little graphic, as she talks about her profession.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ePdor7JX20&feature=related

Leslie Nielsen plays the client that attacks Claudia in her home.  They have finished their "appointment" and it is time for him to go.  He is not the only guy on her list for the evening and she tells him he needs to leave, but he starts to run a bath.  She tells him that he has to go.  He gets ugly.  She tries to escape.  He throws her into the wall, breaking the bathroom mirror, then starts choking her.  She gets ahold of a piece of the mirror and kills him in self-defense.  Nobody wants her to stand trial.  Her parents want her committed.  The psychiatric doctors declare her incompetent.  She speaks up again and again, pissing people off.  She gets assigned a new lawyer, Levinsky, (Richard Dreyfuss) after she breaks the nose of her first one.   Dreyfuss is so human and likeable in this movie.  He loses his temper with her.  He calls her a "pain in the ass" to the judge.  But he sniffs out the truth.  Her stepfather had been inappropriate with her for years and years and her mom looked the other way in order to keep her marriage. 

Don't think I ruined the movie by telling you a bunch of the plot.  If it sounds even mildly interesting to you, I suggest you watch it.  The human emotions are so real.  Truth is victorious.  It is one of the best, most compelling movies I have ever seen.  I thought so back in '87 and I still think so today.  Check it out.