Bipolar disorder: the big picture
Director Alex Heller tells how she made `The Year Between' to show the whole person
When Alex Heller was in college, she had a breakdown. She moved back home and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Ultimately, Heller learned to cope and was able to return to school and complete her degree.
While she still takes four medications a day, she's not defined by her mental illness — now she's a writer, director, producer and movie star in “The Year Between,” which looks back at that tumultuous period.
Heller, who spoke recently by video, plays Clemence Miller and is supported by wonderfully nuanced performances from J. Smith Cameron and Steve Buscemi as Clemence's parents in an emotionally raw but often funny film.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
QHow do you hope this differs from other films centering on mental illness?
Alot of those felt extremely dramatic and often really dark and depressing. That's part of living with mental illness, but there are so many parts that aren't bad — times that are mundane and hilarious and ridiculous and heartwarming and sexy. I wanted to depict a range of moments influenced by bipolar disorder, instead of just showing the extremes.
QAnd there are small moments, like a playful kick between sisters, that have nothing to do with mental illness.
AI love those moments that really humanize the family. This character is more than mentally ill — she is a sister and a daughter and a creative person and a pain in the ass. It's nice to have that dimension to the story and have it be more than just the one lens of illness.
QYou don't preach but you clearly have opinions on mental illness and its treatment. Were there points you really wanted to make?
AMental health care workers in movies are always either angels or sinister, but really even the best ones don't always have the answer and the worst ones have good moments. Also, you don't usually see the duality of psychotherapy and psychiatry — usually, all mental health care is condensed into one character. For me, it was important to show the distinction.
Medication might be a sensitive topic in the movie — I feel there has been a bias against it but I'm taking four medications a day and have for 10 years. It was hard to find that cocktail and it can be a long arduous journey, but all I can say is it was lifesaving for me.
On my mental illness meme account, I have thousands of followers and we DM about stuff every day. I found a community of people who, like me, take medication … and complain about them and have side effects that suck but decide to take it anyway. I don't think that story is out there for them and I hope that's what this movie will be. But it's not for everybody and I would never tell anyone what they need to do.
Also, mental health care is a huge privilege and a financial burden. One medication costs $600 a month without insurance but $7 with it. Clemence says to someone, “Why don't you just go to therapy?” but he says, “Not everyone can do that.”
QHow different is the film from if you'd made it when you first wrote it?
AIt started as something very private. When I first wrote the screenplay for an assignment in my senior year at college, I did not think anyone but my teacher would ever read it. I wasn't talking about mental illness then. Only my closest friends knew I took a bus twice a week into Chicago to see my psychiatrist. I didn't know how to talk about it.
One of my best friends did have a parallel experience and so this was her story and my story. Then, as I met more people with mental illness — mostly through my Instagram account where I post mental illness memes — it became the aggregate story of so many people.
Even though I've been trying to make the movie for six years, I got to make it at exactly the right time for me. I needed that time to refine the script and to create short films and become a better director.
QFor much of the movie, Clemence takes and takes, literally and figuratively, from everyone around her. She's clearly in agony but her roommate is terrified and her siblings are suffering from the twisting family dynamic. How do you want the audience to see her behavior?
AI am hypersensitive to how people view Clemence, in the beginning especially. It determines for some people if they like the movie or will even keep watching it.
Some people root for her and some can't stand to watch this person. The fact that you see the agony speaks to an experience and empathy that some audience members have. Not everyone can look at someone that's really messed up and destructive and think, “They must be going through something really dark and really need help.”
That was a younger version of me — I had compulsive illegal behaviors and there was nothing I could do about it and I felt everyone saw me as a bad person and a monster and that was my lot in life. Beyond the mental illness, I was just wondering if I had a bad personality. It was really hard.
I hope people hang on long enough to see that Clemence does have an arc and does kind of learn that not only is she dealing with a mental illness but she needs to grow as a person.
QClemence often lacks empathy but you allow us to feel her family's struggles. Why was that important?
AMy main target audience is people who are living parallel experiences, not just Clem but the family. It takes a lot of strength to be someone who cares about someone going through this. It takes resilience to not give up. This movie is very much for them too.
I really wanted the movie to explore how this family is frustrated by Clemence but they love her. She takes up a lot of space and her younger siblings are going without as much attention as they would have liked. I have three sisters and there are a lot of complexities to a family weathering a mental illness.
When I was diagnosed, my family was diagnosed. To this day, my parents have a section on their bookshelf at home: “Bipolar Disorder for Dummies,” “How to Prevent Bipolar Relapse.” They tried so hard to learn and have patience for me and to help me.
I owe them my actual life.