Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
A MAN AND A WOMAN 1966
Old Grief Can Interfere With New Love
Even beautiful love stories have their complications when grieving for an old love isn’t over. Claude Lelouch’s captivating film A Man And A Woman 1966 has a lot to say about what it takes not to turn away from a new chance to fall in love. It’s in the story Jean-Louis tells Anne early in…
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THE NIGHTINGALE
What A Well-Crafted Film Tells
About Hate, Revenge, Grief
& Unexpected Empathy
Forgiveness is overrated. Understanding is not. And, there’s much to understand in Jennifer Kent’s riveting, violently troubling, and powerful new film, The Nightingale; about trauma, PTSD, unbearable grief, and the sometimes unimaginable sources of empathy. No, no one should ever be expected to forgive their abusers. “Forgiveness” for sadistic cruelty isn’t healing. What helps is…
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THE LAST BLACK MAN
IN SAN FRANCISCO
When There’s No Home
In A Mother’s Heart
What are the basic ingredients in Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails’s The Last Black Man In San Francisco? An old Victorian house. A young man who has no home. A mother who abandoned him and can’t keep him in her heart. A necessary fantasy. A Greek Chorus (that speaks the anger, hate, and under it,…
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WINTER LIGHT
Ingmar Bergman (1963)
A Man Who Cannot 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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THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(Ingmar Bergman, 1961) Can A Cold, Stony-Faced Father
Drive A Girl Insane?
Can a cold narcissistic father drive a girl insane? The short answer is yes. Wilfred Bion defined psychosis as hatred of reality. And, what is there to love about the reality of a self-obsessed father who cares more about his own desires than his children? Facing that is horror. We see it in Through A…
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THE SEVENTH SEAL
(Ingmar Bergman 1958)
What It Takes To Open A Closed Heart
Antonius Block is a Knight in despair. A kind of despair that puts him right into a fight for his life. A fight that forces him to challenge Death to a chess game, determined to outwit him. Can he do it? What will it take to tip our Knight’s waning hourglass back in his favor?…
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