Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
FLORIDA PROJECT
How A (Seemingly)
Happy Life Can Shatter
Life doesn’t shatter in an instant, but it can seem like it when you live in a delusionally “happy,” thumbing your nose at all kinds of rules, sort of “fun.” This is the stuff of mania and mania teeters on a very delicate balance; it can easily come crashing down. Plus manic defiance is no…
LEO HURWITZ
NATIVE LAND 1943
Forces Against Labor Rights
The Making of Native Land Leo Hurwitz’s Native Land (Watch Film) is a 1942 expose of repressive forces against labor organizing. The film is based on the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee’s (1936-1941) 65 volumes of testimony to the Senate on their investigation. And, the investigation’s results couldn’t be more troubling. The Committee found that…
LION
Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues
Where is home? That’s the complicated question at the heart of Garth Davis’ film Lion, for a lost, bewildered, illiterate, scared, traumatized, stoically brave, and lovingly gentle 5-year-old boy, Saroo (Sunny Pawar). This little boy accidentally finds himself on a train taking him far, far from home, where he can’t speak the language and has…
