24 Mar

Posted at 05:02h in Film by

Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2016 Oscar nominated documentary, The Look Of Silence, is a riveting exploration of the Indonesian genocide’s complicated psychological aftermath. In 1965-1967, the military dictatorship killed over a million assumed Communists opposed to their rule. In the film, we follow the Rukun family, centered on 44-year-old Adi, all unable to grieve the brutal murder of son and brother, Ramli. This loss has destroyed their lives. Adi, an optometrist, approaches the killers on the pretext of examining their eyes, trying to make sense of his brother’s death. Facing the past is the only way to break free of a very...

10 Mar

Posted at 06:48h in Film by

Asif Kapadia’s 2016 Oscar winning Best Documentary, Amy, is a deeply truthful portrayal of the troubled psychological life of 6-time Grammy winner, Amy Winehouse. Amy predicted fame would drive her mad and, in a sense, it did. What the film makes clear to me, as a psychoanalyst, is that her complex fear of losing what she had, whether musical fame or love, was the real problem. We touch the surface of Amy’s fears in these lyrics from What Is It About Men: “my Freudian fate. History repeats itself. It fails to die.” The anxieties rooted in her “Freudian fate” were...

28 Feb

Posted at 01:43h in Film by

I am a psychoanalyst who loves my work. I am also intrigued by what the characters in film can tell us about real human problems. This season, I've closely watched and written about all the Best Picture Nominees. I've also written pieces on several of the nominated documentaries and some of the films with nominated actors and actresses. In my pieces, I've covered themes including the following: bulimia, divided selves, the dynamics of fear, how integrity can triumph over fear, humanizing revenge, homesickness, the dangers of living in a psycological bubble, what happens to a baby who isn't loved, being love-starved, depression and mental tyrants, breaking the secrecy surrounding sexual abuse,...

27 Feb

Posted at 23:25h in Film by

Director Ridley Scott's film, The Martian, tells the story of NASA astronaut Mark Watney’s (Matt Damon) accidental abandonment on the barren planet of Mars. Early childhood abandonment also creates a desolate emotional landscape. People can’t be trusted. Hope is fractured. On Mars, Mark has two things to turn to: the distasteful music of Commander Lewis’ (Jessica Chastain) 1970’s disco classics and his own ingenious tactics of survival. For anyone abandoned, these are serious questions: is clinging to fierce self-sufficiency the answer? Or is human connection that has already failed a too risky music to trust? Abandonment An unexpected and violent dust storm...

26 Feb

Posted at 17:58h in Film by

Steven Spielberg's powerful film, Bridge of Spies, asks some compelling psychological questions. Could there be two more different men than a Brooklyn lawyer in 1957 at the height of the Cold War and an alleged Russian spy – or are they different at all? And, if they aren’t, what is it exactly that forms an unexpected human bond in the face of hostile forces trying to bring them down? With James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) and Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) that connection boils down to one complex thing: being A Standing Man. What it means to be A Standing Man is at the...

25 Feb

Posted at 01:05h in Film by

There are opportunists in the mind that 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, as well as the kinds of control they exert. We see in the characters of Max (Tom Hardy), Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), and Nux (Nicholas Hoult), what it takes to fight these tyrannical forces and also what causes that fight, in some,...

23 Feb

Posted at 20:39h in Film by

Steve Jobs is a brilliantly conceived and emotionally revealing film by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle. According to both, this film is a human story not a biopic. I agree. As we get to know Jobs through the filmmakers’ eyes and Michael Fassbender’sperformance, we are taken into the heartbreaking roots of his controlling behavior. If we look closely at the effects of his earliest days, it’s possible to understand why some people use their intellect over feeling – to stonewall any recognition of the need to give or receive love. A Baby Film, of course, takes artistic license. I didn’t...

18 Feb

Posted at 17:46h in Film by

Director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Emma Donoghue's film, ROOM, takes us directly into the emotional experience of trauma. As the film opens, we hear a young boy’s voice introducing us to a girl named Ma. Kidnapped, stolen from her life, and kept in ROOM for seven years, Ma lives in a world as incomprehensible as Alice’s in Alice in Wonderland. Those victimized by trauma know its terror. Yet that terror,  not manageable alone, is put far aside someplace else in order not to feel it. What kind of help do those who’ve been severely traumatized need to slowly give words to terror? Terror Terror is a...

10 Feb

Posted at 01:00h in Film by

The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay, starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Brad Pitt, tells more than the story of the U.S. housing bubble from 2001 to 2005 and the risky advantages taken by mortgage companies, hedge funds, and investment bankers to profit from it. I’m a psychoanalyst not an economist. The housing bubble is one thing. Living in psychological bubbles leads to dangerous behaviors and disastrous consequences, not unlike the 2008 U.S. economic crash. Selina Gomez, at the blackjack table, says it well: “I’m on a winning streak … how could I lose, right?” Believing Things That “Just...

04 Feb

Posted at 00:06h in Film by

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one” M. Garabedian Secrets are damaging. The film, Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy, tells the story of one very pernicious secret uncovered by an investigative team, named Spotlight, at the Boston Globe. That secret, the wide spread sexual abuse by Catholic priests of many young congregants, managed to evade attention for years even though it was right under people’s noses. Why? The coercions that maintain secrecy, both external and internal, must be taken seriously in order for abuse victims to come forward and get help. The Secret Cardinal Bernard...