Mad to be Normal is the story of controversial Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing and the infamous anti-psychiatry experiment he ran at Kingsley Hall- a medication-free sanctuary which made headlines around the world. During the 1960s and 1970s Laing, played by David Tennant, was an international celebrity. In Santa Monica, 4,000 people turned out to see him perform a lecture, a week after Bob Dylan had pulled in the same number. A radio journalist confidently referred to him as the “white Martin Luther King.” His books topped student reading lists the world over, as his language excited and enthralled them: “a child born today stands a 10 times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university….perhaps it is our very way of educating them that is driving them mad… [and]…”so- called ‘normal men’ have in the last 50 years killed perhaps 100 million of their fellow normal men”. It was opinions like these which turned the psychiatric establishment against him. An exceptional cast includes Emmy award winning Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon and Gabriel Byrne.
The film premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 26, 2017.
Director: Robert Mullan
Producer: Charlotte Arden
Executive Producer: Peter Dunphy
Starring:
David Tennant is on pugnacious, mercurial and beady-eyed form in this very interesting and absorbing film. It’s one of his best performances.
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The charismatic core is Tennant, all unsentimental humanity, flamboyant flaws and paisley shirts as the man whose radical methods had him dubbed “the acid Marx” and “the white Martin Luther King
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Tennant offers a spot-on evocation of a mercurial figure.
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Tennant’s charismatic performance draws attention to the way cinema can bring an acceptability to ideas and individuals that is otherwise alien.
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“The film’s main asset is Tennant; his Laing is both commanding and nurturing, provocative and playful.”
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“David Tennant is electric as RD Laing”
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