Three Christs is based on the book Three Christs of Ypsilanti by noted social psychologist, Milton Rokeach, who treated three schizophrenics, all with the same delusion they were Jesus Christ. The film is set at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, where Rokeach treated the three men as part of a research study between 1959 and 1961.
The protagonist, Dr. Alan Stone (based on Rokeach) is played by an earnest but good Richard Gere. Stone conscripts his "Three Christs", Joseph (Peter Dinklage) a dwarf who believes he's a sophisticated Englishman, Leon (Walton Goggins), son of an abusive religious fanatic and Clyde (Bradley Whitford), whose wife died following a botched abortion.
It's Stone's conviction that psychotherapy is preferable to shock treatment, lobotomies or anti-psychotic drugs, so he gets the idea if he puts his Three Christs in the same room, they might be able help one another (of course under his caring supervision). He hires a young assistant, Becky (Charlotte Hope), who has her own issues (a brother committed suicide following bouts of mental illness).
Stone is treated as a do-gooder liberal by the powers that be at the hospital including Dr. Rogers (Stephen Root), his so-called mentor who initially brought him for the study project. Stone ends up directly clashing with the chief of staff, Dr. Orbus (Kevin Pollack) , who is entirely unsympathetic toward Stone's type of therapy and threatens to go to Rogers and have him shut the project down at the first sign of trouble from his patients.
The first half of the second act depicts Stone attempting to gain the trust of his Three Christs with mixed results. At one point Joseph has a meltdown and the staff forces him to undergo electroshock therapy. With that setback, Rogers threatens to shut the study down but Stone gets a reprieve after Rogers agrees to wait for a review from Dr. Abraham (Jane Alexander), who apparently has the final decision as to having the study continue.
Usually at the midpoint there's something a little more dramatic for the protagonist who often is forced to move in a new direction. The complications in the second half of act two aren't very pronounced in comparison with the first half-there's more of the same problems with the Three Christs who are each on the verge of having a breakdown and becoming completely psychotic.
Screenwriters Eric Nazarian and co-writer Jon Avnet (also the film's director) introduce a subplot involving Stone's wife, Ruth (Julianna Margulies), a thankless role in which the wife's alcoholism threatens to undermine Stone, already under extreme pressure at the hospital, for his unwelcome experiment.
Despite some of the repetitious machinations of the Three Christs, things begin to pick up when Stone is featured on the cover of Psychology Today; Orbus decides that a less punitive stance toward the study patients might help him get noticed among his psychologist peers, just like Stone. Orbus meets with Joseph who sees right through him and ends up threatening the deceitful administrator. This leads to the major setback for the protagonist at the end of the second act when Stone attacks one of doctors who administers electroshock to Joseph, who in turn ends up committing suicide by jumping from Orbus' tower office.
Stone then must extricate himself from the third act crisis when he faces loss of his license and the shutting down of his study project. Dr. Abraham (equivalent to a Wizard of Oz type character) shuts the project down but then gives Stone the opportunity to take his two surviving patients to NYC where he can continue working with them. Orbus receives his comeuppance when he's forced to retire.
Three Christs I suppose is a feel good film about the psychotherapeutic professions It posits a bit of a pie-in-the-sky outlook as it presupposes that the patients Dr. Stone was working with were not hopeless cases and deep down had "hearts of gold" (not all psychiatric patients, on the other hand, are necessarily like that in real life).
Ironically, Rokeach came to reject his own experiment with the Three Christs, stating that he adopted an unfair "Godlike" stance, manipulating his patients, essentially against their will.The stories of the Three Christs eventually becomes a bit too much but the tension between the rival brands of psychiatry and psychotherapy, keep things moving until the dramatic dark moment at the end of the second act.
The protagonist, Dr. Alan Stone (based on Rokeach) is played by an earnest but good Richard Gere. Stone conscripts his "Three Christs", Joseph (Peter Dinklage) a dwarf who believes he's a sophisticated Englishman, Leon (Walton Goggins), son of an abusive religious fanatic and Clyde (Bradley Whitford), whose wife died following a botched abortion.
It's Stone's conviction that psychotherapy is preferable to shock treatment, lobotomies or anti-psychotic drugs, so he gets the idea if he puts his Three Christs in the same room, they might be able help one another (of course under his caring supervision). He hires a young assistant, Becky (Charlotte Hope), who has her own issues (a brother committed suicide following bouts of mental illness).
Stone is treated as a do-gooder liberal by the powers that be at the hospital including Dr. Rogers (Stephen Root), his so-called mentor who initially brought him for the study project. Stone ends up directly clashing with the chief of staff, Dr. Orbus (Kevin Pollack) , who is entirely unsympathetic toward Stone's type of therapy and threatens to go to Rogers and have him shut the project down at the first sign of trouble from his patients.
The first half of the second act depicts Stone attempting to gain the trust of his Three Christs with mixed results. At one point Joseph has a meltdown and the staff forces him to undergo electroshock therapy. With that setback, Rogers threatens to shut the study down but Stone gets a reprieve after Rogers agrees to wait for a review from Dr. Abraham (Jane Alexander), who apparently has the final decision as to having the study continue.
Usually at the midpoint there's something a little more dramatic for the protagonist who often is forced to move in a new direction. The complications in the second half of act two aren't very pronounced in comparison with the first half-there's more of the same problems with the Three Christs who are each on the verge of having a breakdown and becoming completely psychotic.
Screenwriters Eric Nazarian and co-writer Jon Avnet (also the film's director) introduce a subplot involving Stone's wife, Ruth (Julianna Margulies), a thankless role in which the wife's alcoholism threatens to undermine Stone, already under extreme pressure at the hospital, for his unwelcome experiment.
Despite some of the repetitious machinations of the Three Christs, things begin to pick up when Stone is featured on the cover of Psychology Today; Orbus decides that a less punitive stance toward the study patients might help him get noticed among his psychologist peers, just like Stone. Orbus meets with Joseph who sees right through him and ends up threatening the deceitful administrator. This leads to the major setback for the protagonist at the end of the second act when Stone attacks one of doctors who administers electroshock to Joseph, who in turn ends up committing suicide by jumping from Orbus' tower office.
Stone then must extricate himself from the third act crisis when he faces loss of his license and the shutting down of his study project. Dr. Abraham (equivalent to a Wizard of Oz type character) shuts the project down but then gives Stone the opportunity to take his two surviving patients to NYC where he can continue working with them. Orbus receives his comeuppance when he's forced to retire.
Three Christs I suppose is a feel good film about the psychotherapeutic professions It posits a bit of a pie-in-the-sky outlook as it presupposes that the patients Dr. Stone was working with were not hopeless cases and deep down had "hearts of gold" (not all psychiatric patients, on the other hand, are necessarily like that in real life).
Ironically, Rokeach came to reject his own experiment with the Three Christs, stating that he adopted an unfair "Godlike" stance, manipulating his patients, essentially against their will.The stories of the Three Christs eventually becomes a bit too much but the tension between the rival brands of psychiatry and psychotherapy, keep things moving until the dramatic dark moment at the end of the second act.