For anyone older than 40, the story of “Sybil,” as told in the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber(book) and the Emmy-winning television movie that starred Sally Field and Joanne Woodward, is one of those semi-traumatizing pop-cultural touchstones -- like "Helter Skelter" or Watergate.
The horrific tale of a young woman so abused by her mother that her mind shatters into 16 separate personalities rocked 1970s America. The reality and consequence of maternal sexual abuse, a whole new category of mental illness and the inner-workings of the still mistrusted psychiatric profession were laid bare in one complex and disturbing tale.
So it would be natural to approach any remake, even one starring Jessica Lange and Tammy Blanchard, with extreme caution. And unfortunately, that caution is completely justified.
The new "Sybil," which premieres tonight on CBS, is told at such high speed that it becomes more psychiatric variety show -- for our next number, Sybil as a boy! -- than the careful excavation of a mind through the life-changing relationship of patient and doctor, which made the original so unforgettable.
Part of the problem is simple logistics. Long gone are the days of the television movie special, and apparently CBS didn't think the story warranted two parts. So director Joseph Sargent and writer John Pielmeier had the unenviable task of cramming what had originally been a three-hour-plus film into a time slot half that size.
So, after an updated and effective opening, Pielmeier just assumes that the viewer knows the basic story already, so we might as well cut right to the good stuff. Within minutes of the opening credits, here is Sybil Dorset (Blanchard), a troubled art student at Columbia University who gets very upset when she drops things and unaccountably winds up in Philadelphia for days at a time. Here's the sexist male school psychiatrist diagnosing her as a classic hysteric and foisting her on Dr. Cornelia Wilbur (Lange), the one female shrink available. And here's Sybil morphing into Vicki, the French girl who acts as the "shepherd" personality who explains the whole setup to the imperturbable Dr. Wilbur.
There is a minor B-plot about the flak Wilbur took for diagnosing Sybil as a multiple personality, a category of mental illness that did not exist at the time. But mostly "Sybil" is a showcase for all the various personalities who pose and preen and lecture Wilbur while she dutifully takes notes and tries to get them to explain just what Mother did to make them necessary.
