Much Madness is Divinest Sense

I first want to preface this trailer review with an update: go see Split. The less I say about it the better, but it takes the more respectful approach to mental illness and is a most satisfying return for M. Night Shyamalan.

Now, back to the trailer at hand. I admit to not paying too much attention to the poetry part of my English literature classes. I was a biology major and mainly took humanities courses because I had to. But I always liked that Emily Dickenson poem about the sublimity of madness, or rather, what society would call “mad”:

Demurring from conventional wisdom will usually be thought insane. But what if our current state of reality is just an illusion from the madness with which we are already infected? Can we escape it once we are forced to acknowledge it?

From what I can tell, that is the theme presented by the trailer for A Cure for Wellness, a Gore Verbinski film due out February 17th. A young man is charged with retrieving the head of his company, who has suddenly fled to a retreat in Switzerland. The young man leaves the colorless boardroom and dour, expressionless board members to the fresh, open air of the Swiss countryside and to an asylum that appears to offer some kind of revolutionary therapy to its inmates. But something appears to be off as a young woman is seen standing on the edge of the roof – the same young woman who tells our protagonist that no one ever leaves. An accident lands him back in the asylum where he undergoes a “treatment” that may be cure or kill. Is this a cult? A mad scientist conducting unsavory experiments? Or is the young man actually being cured of something? Whatever’s going on, color me intrigued.

And go see Split!