A TRIUMPH FOR RYDER, UNINTERRUPTED.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Winona Ryder has devoted half a decade to bringing Susanna Kaysen's mental hospital memoir ``Girl, Interrupted'' to the screen. Happily, and unlike some movie stars' pet projects, that long period of care and consideration is evident throughout the movie.

Surprisingly funny, sensitive and dubious of psychological simplification, the film is hardly the ``Bedlam'' rehash it could easily have become; in fact, it in many ways it makes the relatively enlightened ``Snake Pit'' look lurid. But one of ``Interrupted's'' strongest accomplishments is the way it brings full, dignified dimension to many of its young women while not downplaying the genuine problems most of them, with varying degrees of success, must cope with.

Director James Mangold (``Cop Land''), who was also responsible for the screenplay adaptation's final form, only occasionally lapses into sensationalism (and by the time he does, the story more or less needs to go there), and overindulges in one obvious metaphor (too many ``Wizard of Oz'' references). Much more significantly, he subtly yet strongly captures the peculiar tenor of the late 1960s, in which the film is set, and how the vastly different views of the era's young people could quite credibly be viewed as crazy by their elders.

And while that might be all that's going on with Ryder's Susanna, the film is much too smart to paint her as simply misunderstood. The 17-year-old daughter of a well-off Boston family did, after all, chase a bottle of aspirin with one of vodka. It may not have been the most extravagant suicide attempt in history, but it was nevertheless a cry of anguish.

Susanna doesn't know why she feels so unhappy, and even after two years at the cushiest institution money can buy (condensed to one year in the movie), she and we remain uncertain about it all. There are early intimations that an affair with a teacher drove her over the edge, but that probability eventually fades. One of her smugger shrinks, played as sympathetically as possible by Vanessa Redgrave, suggests a more pathological promiscuity. This may or may not be part of Susanna's nature but clearly, considering the sexual revolution raging all around, it's not the wellspring of her discomfort either.

A wise and patient nurse, played by Whoopi Goldberg with an admirable minimum of cloyingness, comes closest to pinpointing Susanna's real, comparatively minor complaint. But her insights, astute as they may be, can't settle the whole question, either.

The film's main focus is on the girls in fictional Claymoore Hospital's minimum security wing. To tell the truth, there's actually little security there at all. Each inmate has a nice, semi-private room, many have grounds-walking privileges and something like conjugal visits are even permitted. The ward's resident, dominant sociopath, Lisa (Angelina Jolie in an enjoyably showoff, effortlessly provocative performance), also has keys to most of the facility's off-limits areas (like, absurdly, a basement bowling alley).

Susanna's backstory is told in a complex but revealing flashback structure that superbly illustrates her initial confusion. But the film gradually eases into two main narrative lines: Susanna's coming to terms with herself and the charismatic Lisa's toxic influence.

Ryder expertly modulates her performance to Susanna's mood swings. But more than that, she displays an outstanding, seemingly instinctive sense of when to express Susanna through words and when to speak more through silence. Ryder has long had something of Lillian Gish in her screen presence, and ''Interrupted'' displays that sublime gift for visual acting better than any of her previous films. At the same time, the girlish tics that have irritated in some of Ryder's earlier roles have been banished from her bracingly mature and prickly ''Girl'' woman.

Other standouts in the cast include Brittany Murphy as an isolationist whose problems go far deeper than her apparent bulimia and Clea Duvall as a sweet and vulnerable compulsive liar. Unlike some girls in the facility - who by today's sensibilities wouldn't even be considered eccentric, let alone candidates for treatment - these two aren't just victims of the time's retrograde attitudes but people in definite need of help. The mysteries of the mind remain elusive throughout ``Girl, Interrupted.'' Those who want simple answers where none pertain may find that maddening but, at least compared to most movies about mental illness, it's really a remarkably sane approach.

The facts

The film: ``Girl, Interrupted'' (R; language, nudity, drug use, racism).

The stars: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Whoopi Goldberg, Brittany Murphy, Vanessa Redgrave.

Behind the scenes: Directed by James Mangold. Written by Mangold, Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on Susanna Kaysen's book. Produced by Douglas Wick and Cathy Konrad. Released by Columbia Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, five minutes.

Playing: AMC Promenade, Woodland Hills; Winnetka, Chatsworth; Century 14, Century City; Avco, Westwood; Criterion, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three and one half stars.

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Photo

Photo: Winona Ryder stars in the true story of Susanna Kaysen, who was institutionalized in the late '60s, in ``Girl, Interrupted.''