"Sybil" Review

On February 21 the Lifetime channel aired “Sybil” starring Tammy Blanchard as the troubled title character and Jessica Lange as the resilient Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. If viewers have seen the original 1976 film starring Sally Field as Sybil and Joanne Woodward as Dr. Wilbur it is almost impossible to view the remake without making some comparisons to the original, which may not be a bad thing.
The character of Sybil is based on a woman named Shirley Ardell Mason. This is revealed at the end of the film. She began psychiatric counseling with Dr. Cornelia Wilbur in the early 50s because she was experiencing blackouts.
In treatment Wilbur said that Mason’s blackouts were due to her being afflicted with Multiple Personality Disorder (now called Dissociative Identity Disorder). The MPD was a result of horrific abuse that Mason experienced at the hands of her mother.
Wilbur treated Mason for almost 12 years. At the end of treatment all of Mason’s personalities were apparently integrated, making one person. A book was written in 1973 by Flora Rheta Schreiber about the case.
Wilbur never revealed Mason’s identity and they remained friends until Wilbur’s death in 1992. Mason died in February of 1998. The validity of the case has since been disputed. It has been said that Wilbur coerced these personalities out of Mason as a way to get her to speak more freely of her abuse.
While the performances of Blanchard and Lange are excellent, the film doesn’t stand well on its own in explaining the complexity of the famous case of the woman known as “Sybil” who allegedly and possessed 16 different personalities within one body.
For one thing; the film is too short. It’s only 85 minutes long and if staying true to life, is supposed to span 11 years. That’s a lot of ground to cover in 85 minutes. Flashbacks showing a young Sybil being abused are shoved together and too short to really convey the fear that the little girl must have felt of her mother. Speaking of her mother, JoBeth Williams’ portrayal of Hattie Dorsett almost comes across as campy and slightly comical. The faces she makes that are supposed to be mean and scary are over the top. This is not necessarily Williams’ fault. Her scenes are so short the depth of her character’s insanity is never shown.
Also, they are many scenes that show Wilbur’s struggle being female in the male dominated psychiatric community. While this is a brief insight into the challenges that Wilbur herself faced, the film is not titled “Sybil and Dr. Wilbur”, but “Sybil” and those scenes could have been better put to use in explaining the depths of her psychosis.
On a positive note, Blanchard does a great job in showing her range as an actress while doing her best not to imitate Sally Field’s performance. Lange too shows she still has her acting chops and is not afraid to age gracefully or portray unglamorous women on film. Also, the film includes more scenes and characters from the book that were not included in the original film like when Sybil is lost in Philadelphia and her relationship with boyfriend Ramon.
Overall the film plays like a condensed version of an abridged version of the book. If the viewer is going into this remake with no knowledge of the case they will not come out of it with a true understanding of the story. See the original.