Spider (2002)

Mental illness is a rich but difficult mine of artistic expression. The arduous struggle of the seriously insane to integrate the troubling voices and disturbing visions within their minds with the often hostile and harsh outside world are as dramatic and tragic as any other plot construct in fiction or film. Spider (2002) takes a challenged and dedicated audience deep within the whirling, tormented internal universe of asylum graduate Ralph Fiennes. Outside of an institution for the first time since his childhood, existing day to day in the insecure, shifting environment of a halfway reentry house, Fiennes’s story is told in a plague of flashbacks. The road to sanity is littered with shattered remains of memories and nightmares. Fiennes must separate the actual from the illusory and piece together the puzzle of reality.