She’s all about self-justification and emotional highs and lows. Like a typical borderline, she will not admit that she’s wrong, and she won’t accept responsibility. She’s a pathological liar, but she always finds a way to rationalize, to justify herself. Wilkes’ psychology is complex, and it’s all abnormal.
Instead, Annie, full of delusions of grandeur that she will become a companion and muse to Paul, keeps him captive in a little room for months.
This is only supposed to last until the roads are clear and an ambulance can come pick Paul up and bring him to a proper hospital. She takes him to her farmhouse and, since she’s a nurse, she sets his broken legs and puts him in a bed in her guestroom to recuperate. Wilkes (Kathy Bates) rescues bestselling author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) after he has a car wreck in a remote area of Colorado during a snowstorm. I was very much drawn to what I now recognize as Annie Wilkes’ borderline personality disorder, for instance. Looking at the new Shout! Factory Blu-ray release, I noticed a lot of other things. In this way, Misery says a lot about all sorts of pop culture fandoms that become completely irrational in their dogmatic devotion. But a writer is also subject to the desires of their heart. A writer depends on their audience for support, which includes money if they happen to make any. For me, Misery was always mostly about an artist fighting against the whims of an audience resistant to change.
