Posts Tagged ‘depression’
GROUNDHOG DAY (1993-2020)
What Does It Take To Get Out
Of A Very Bad Negative Rut?
Do you feel like poor Phil Connors (Bill Murray) – stuck repeating the same day over and over again? COVID-19 quarantine can do that. It’s been 27 years since Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day hit the theaters for the first time. But 6 months probably feels long enough. If you’ve been ruminating about your love life…
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WINTER LIGHT
Ingmar Bergman (1963)
A Man Who Need Cannot Love
Reverend Tomas Ericsson is a man who cannot need. And, because he can’t, he struggles with both God and love. Tomas over and over coldly rejects his desperately loving former lover, Marta. Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light 1963, slowly reveals the source of his loss of faith. Tomas loved his dead wife: “When she died, so…
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JANIS LITTLE GIRL BLUE
Singing For Her Feelings
To Be Heard
“I sing because I can experience a lot of feelings…” Otherwise, Janis Joplin had no one to hear. The most chilling part of Amy Berg’s documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue, is to witness the cold formality of Mother and Father Joplin. No one can miss Janis’s hunger for love. Less obvious are the roots of…
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MAD MAX FURY ROAD
Depression &
Tyrants That Take Over Your Mind
Opportunists in the mind take over in states of emotional deprivation. Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) in Director George Miller’s western style post apocalyptic film, Mad Max:Fury Road, is a good example. As a psychoanalyst who treats severe depressive states, I found this film a fascinating allegorical tale of the conditions under which mental tyrants take over,…
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THE END OF THE TOUR
A Self-Loathing Voice & Depression
The End of the Tour shows that a self-loathing voice can’t be allowed to take center stage. It makes you believe other people are thinking terrible thoughts about you too. You keep your distance. It’s a lonely place to be. David Foster Wallace’s short story, The Depressed Person, shows he knew that struggle well. So…
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THE END OF THE TOUR
Jason Segel Gets Inside
Foster Wallace’s Quiet Torment
Depression is outwardly a quiet torment. Inside it’s an almost constant implosion of self-deprecating self-doubt. That’s what we witness in director James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour – wrapped around David Foster Wallace like his famous bandana. Woven all-too-frequently into the substance of his conversation with David Lipsky: the ravages of a cruelly oppressive…
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