Film
WHIPLASH
Why Cruelty is Not The Winner
“I don’t want the Raisinettes, I just eat around them” … that’s what Andrew Neiman, in Whiplash, does with the hurts in his life. That’s what he tries to do with jazz teacher Terrance Fletcher’s demeaning and crude sadism in this psychologically riveting film. Fletcher’s cruelty has its hook and he finds it in Andrew’s…
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BIRDMAN
The Voice In His Head
Truth Or Dare, Friend Or Foe?
What do we talk about when we talk about someone losing his grip on reality? When it comes to that question, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s brilliant film, Birdman, is meaty stuff for a psychoanalyst like me. Riggan Thompson, former action hero, has-been, failed husband and father, is struggling to change his life – against a Voice…
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THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
What Fake Personas Cover-Up
Why does someone create an illusion of who they are? Wes Anderson, a master of psychological ironies, tells us quite a lot about that subject in The Grand Budapest Hotel. At the center of the film is M. Gustave trying to live as someone he is not. All around him are juxtapositions of barbarism with…
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THE IMITATION GAME
Turing’s Anxiety
Keeping Peas And Carrots Apart
Peas versus carrots: thinking versus feeling. Which is the winner? Alan Turing’s mathematical thinking, as The Imitation Game shows, cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during WWII and saved millions. Yet, the same man’s brilliant thinking couldn’t save him. Crippled by terrible psychological fears (far worsened by Britain’s criminalization of homosexuality), his crafty “imitation game” was…
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THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
My Views On Loneliness
Loneliness comes in many forms. James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything tells a few stories of loneliness – Stephen Hawkings’, Jane Hawkings, and Jonathan Hellyer Jones. Jonathan – choir director, family helper, and the man who became Jane’s second husband – captures vividly what can become loneliness’ black hole when he says: “I suffer from the…
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ADDICTED
Realistic Characters 101
Addicted Fails
Watching Billie Woodruff’s Addicted, I could barely restrain myself from grabbing a tomato and joining my Rotten Tomatoes compadres in throwing it at the screen. The 8% of critics who gave their approval of this psychologically offensive project must have been feeling particularly generous that day. What could have been a sensitive and even insightful look at a woman struggling…
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