Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
SUMMER WITH MONIKA
(Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Reality & Childhood Trauma
Ends An Idyllic Summer Love
Summer love on a deserted island isn’t real life. That’s the Gordian knot in Bergman’s 1953 Summer With Monika. This erotic and heartbreaking film tells the story of two adolescents caught in the throes of an idyllic love. It’s a love they both long for, given their troubled and sad early lives. And also an escape…
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WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness
“One sleeps in one’s childhood’s shoes,” Bergman remembers Swedish poet Maria Wine, saying, and “that was the real starting point of Wild Strawberries.” (p. 212*) It’s true. And, some live inside the echoes of a cold mother. Every psychoanalyst knows how our childhoods slumber within each waking and dreaming moment of our lives, creating their…
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IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
That “I Got You” Kind Of Love
The Best Remedy For Hate, Helplessness & Despair
The River’s family’s “I Got You” kind of love is If Beale Street Could Talk’s most potent reminder of exactly what transcends hate, helplessness, and despair. We see it when Tish’s dad holds her: “I got you, baby, I got you.” When Tish says to her newborn son: “I got you. I got you. I…
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CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?
Writer’s Block?
It’s That Critic In Your Head
Lee Israel has talent; she just doesn’t believe she does. We can see it in Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me. In a creative way she impersonates the letters of great writers, adding her own writerly wit; but, hiding behind their names. (In fact, the NY Times called her book: Can You Ever Forgive…
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PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE.
Oakwood School’s Pad Project
Rise & Fly Out Of Shame!
A sentence to shame is worse than having no sanitary pads month after month. Period. End Of Sentence. This film, 2019 Oscar Winner for Best Short Documentary, shows us clearly that you can’t do much as a girl in rural India if you’re bleeding. But, not only that. When old superstitions and taboos about menstruation…
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A STAR IS BORN
Repeating Notes of Infant Trauma
Can Ruin A Life If Not Heard
Hanging himself wasn’t Jackson Maine’s fault. Nor was his drinking. Yes, his brother Bobby said to the heartbroken, Ally: “It was Jack; not you; not me; Jack and no one else.” But, that’s because he didn’t understand. And, really, Jackson had the right idea: “A song is only an octave. Twelve notes and it repeats.…
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