Side Effects - Deadly Side Effects
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Side Effects - Deadly Side Effects |
| Original title | Side Effects |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 106 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Steven Soderbergh |
| script | Scott Z. Burns |
| production |
Lorenzo di Bonaventura , Gregory Jacobs , Scott Z. Burns |
| music | Thomas Newman |
| camera | Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews) |
| cut | Steven Soderbergh (as Mary Ann Bernard) |
| occupation | |
| |
Side Effects is a thriller from the year 2013 by director Steven Soderbergh .
action
Emily Taylor is being treated for depression and acute suicidal tendencies. After her husband Martin was released from prison after four years in prison for insider trading, she apparently tried to commit suicide several times. Her psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks, fears for her safety and wants to keep her in the clinic for the time being, but Emily convinces him that it is not necessary. To do this, Jonathan gets in touch with Emily's former doctor, Dr. Victoria Siebert, up.
Meanwhile, a pharmaceutical company offers Jonathan to take part in a test study of a new antidepressant with his patients , and he earns a lot of money. When Emily asked, and because her former doctor Siebert recommended it, he prescribed another new antidepressant called Ablixa for Emily. The drug appears to be working well, allowing her to live a normal life aside from sleepwalking, a side effect of the drug - until one evening she suddenly stabs Martin.
Emily, apparently unaware and committed the act while sleepwalking, is brought to justice. Jonathan is fighting for her release as he is certain that Emily's sleepwalking was a side effect of Ablixa. But Jonathan is also under increasing pressure from the public prosecutor's office and his colleagues, because he had not previously admitted Emily - his career is over. Eventually, Emily is found not guilty on condition that she remain in a mental hospital for further treatment by Jonathan.
Shortly after the acquittal, Jonathan saw inconsistencies in Emily's account. There is no such thing as a colleague who Emily spoke about and who allegedly recommended Ablixa to her. Jonathan suspects that Emily was just faking her suicide attempts and side effects to kill her husband, and is determined to restore his reputation. But while he is feverishly looking for clues, the pressure on him increases: his wife leaves him, his practice partners end their cooperation and the pharmaceutical company terminates him.
Finally, Jonathan confronts Victoria with his suspicions and finds out that Victoria and Emily were dating. Emily, who had previously lived a luxury life with Martin, did not want to get used to an average life after her husband's prison sentence and therefore killed Martin. Victoria, who is in love with Emily, had tried to manipulate the stocks of the producer of Ablixa in order to make a lot of money.
Victoria openly threatens Jonathan. But Jonathan finally manages to play Emily against Victoria. Victoria is arrested and Emily ends up in a psychiatric ward, where she has to take strong medication.
background
Steven Soderbergh temporarily ended his directing career with Side Effects . The Hollywood director, who has films like Out Of Sight or Contagion in his vita, wants to dedicate himself to painting and music in the future.
More than ten years ago, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns conducted several weeks of research in the psychiatric department of the famous Rivervue Hospital in New York City . Burns, then a member of the writing team on the critically acclaimed television series Wonderland , which explores the treatment of mental illness from the perspective of doctors and patients, had long conversations with the psychiatrists and watched their work with mentally ill patients, many of whom had criminal backgrounds. During his research, he noticed that antidepressants and pain relievers were being prescribed more and more frequently in the US, which were later linked to crime. The aim of the film is to draw attention to the often uncontrollable use of psychotropic drugs and its consequences.
Soderbergh also criticizes the way society deals with the mentally ill. The fact that unstable personalities are given less credibility and are placed on the margins of society is a flaw that is becoming increasingly common in the USA. A frequent motif in Soderbergh's films is the terrifying power of the big corporations. This can also be seen in his last film: The enormous influence of the pharmaceutical industry on society.
Reviews
“Either way, you can expect an exciting and stylish thriller full of intrigue, deception and ambiguity. And the best thing is: When you see it for the second time, Side Effects is still just as good - then in a different way - and you can concentrate on the clever thematic nuances and the outstanding performance of the actor.
“One of the many virtuoso pieces in Side Effects is a great cynical commercial for the psycho drug Ablixa, in which animated dark clouds with rain showers hover over the heads of all kinds of everyday people before the miracle pill appears and the sun shines again. One can only hope that Steven Soderbergh's rebellion against the film industry doesn't end in television commercials. "
“It goes through the stages of court film, psycho and conspiracy thriller and, truly, soft porn to a hair-raising complicated heist movie finale. And with that, to the blatant weakness of this film, which is extremely witty in the middle section: Soderbergh cannot break away from his ostensibly clever Ocean's plots, which reliably end with boring spelling out of all ambiguities. "
"A clear, effectively staged psychological thriller that sarcastically deals with the drug addiction of the American middle class and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and plays with the narrative conventions of the genre in an original way."
Web links
- Side Effects - Deadly side effects in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Side Effects - Deadly side effects at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Certificate of Release for Side Effects - Fatal Side Effects . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2013 (PDF; test number: 138 210 K).
- ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: At the end come tablets, film review by Andreas Kilb from April 24, 2013
- ↑ Screenmagazin.com: Side Effects from April 25, 2013 (last accessed on July 12, 2013)
- ↑ ingame.de: Film review: Side Effects from April 18, 2013 (last accessed on July 12, 2013)
- ↑ Unikosmos.de: Side Effects - Deadly side effects of April 25, 2013 (last accessed on July 12, 2013)
- ↑ FILM STARTS Film review
- ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: The end of tablets come, film review by Andreas Kilb from April 24, 2013
- ^ Critic.de: Film review by Nino Klingler from February 12, 2013
- ↑ Side Effects - Fatal side effects. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 22, 2017 .