Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
PHANTOM THREAD
What’s It Really About? Reynolds & Alma’s Perverse Feeding Game?
Paul Thomas Anderson has done it again. He’s a master at exploring the various kinds of perverse power games involved in problems with dependency and love. Anderson’s new film, Phantom Thread, is another brilliant character study to add to Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Master, and Inherent Vice (to name a notable few). In Phantom Thread,…
LADY BIRD
Mothers & Daughters
How History Plays Its Part
In Problems Loving and Letting Go
and Lady Bird begins with a Joan Didion quote splashed across the screen: “Anyone who talks about California hedonism has never spent Christmas in Sacramento.” Christmas is mostly for children or, at least, the child part of us. And, few come through childhood unscathed. Greta Gerwig’s charming, brilliantly written, funny, and psychologically real film has…
LEO HURWITZ
DIALOGUE WITH A WOMAN DEPARTED 1972-1980
A Poem Of Love To A Wife
Who Lived In Protest Against Hate
Shoot Film, Not People: this is the poster filmmaker Peggy Lawson, Leo Hurwitz’s wife, carried during a march against the Vietnam War. As we watch Dialogue With A Woman Departed, (Watch Film) Leo’s 4-hour love poem to Peggy, we come back to this sign again and again. Again and again, we come back to Peggy:…
