08 May

Posted at 18:54h in Film by

Cassie lost her very best friend (and only true soulmate) to suicide. Why? A violent and repeated rape seriously traumatized Nina and she couldn't go on. And, no one listened. No one saw the rape as rape and no one blamed the rapist. It makes sense, doesn't it, that Cassie can now think of nothing else but getting revenge for Nina's rape and death? Yes, Cassie, in Emerald Fennell’s brilliantly disturbing and evocative Promising Young Woman, shows us just where trauma-driven obsession takes you. It’s not pretty or healing. In fact, Cassie's obsession is another kind of suicide. Here’s why...

18 Feb

Posted at 04:46h in Film by

Hanging himself wasn’t Jackson Maine’s fault. Nor was his drinking. Yes, his brother Bobby said to the heartbroken, Ally: “It was Jack; not you; not me; Jack and no one else.” But, that’s because he didn’t understand. And, really, Jackson had the right idea: “A song is only an octave. Twelve notes and it repeats. Over and over forever.” Yet, that’s not only what happens in a song; it’s also in the musical undertones that play inside a life; octaves of the past; singing their haunting song. Only sometimes you can’t hear the words; especially when your trauma is in...

26 Jul

Posted at 11:48h in Film by

Tim Wardle’s documentary, Three Identical Strangers, is a timely and disturbing account of the trauma of early separation. As a psychoanalyst who specializes in separation trauma, I left the theater shaken and troubled. Children aren’t for using. They aren’t for self-serving studies, proving points or punishing parents (yes, Trump and your cronies, that’s you.) The scars are severe and they last a lifetime. We see those scars in Bobby, David, and especially Eddy. The triplet’s separation was deliberate. It didn’t have to happen. It happened 6 months after the triplets were born on July 12, 1961 to an unwed Jewish high...

08 Jan

Posted at 08:00h in Film by

How do we find someone – the real person hidden inside? The one who’s been hurt/who struggles/who has his dark demons? How do we understand Hart Crane's suicide; the suicide of an otherwise talented, lively, vivacious, and successful young poet? Leo Hurwitz’s penetrating and poetic script and his camera (with the assistance of fellow cameraman Manfred Kirchheimer), follow John Unterecker, Hart Crane’s biographer (the 800 page “Voyager: A Life Of Hart Crane”), through Unterecker’s researches into Hart Crane’s life. In Search of Hart Crane is composed primarily of fascinating interviews with friends of Hart Crane – those who knew both the...

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...

28 Feb

Posted at 22:16h in Film by

I am one of those who applauded Graham Moore for his moving and courageous acceptance speech when he won his Imitation Game Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. So, as a psychologist, when I read the critiques, I had to stop and think: Why? Why pick on things like – he isn’t gay? He used the word weird to describe his experience and that of others? That most people won’t be standing on that stage in their lifetimes? This happens for various psychological reasons. Sometimes old personal hurts, like feeling unheard and marginalized, get stirred up – and it’s easy to...

08 Sep

Posted at 22:37h in Film by

[caption id="attachment_817" align="alignleft" width="500"]eszdx photo credit: Peggy Sirota[/caption]AUGUST 11 — I was shocked and saddened to hear of Robin Williams’ untimely death and tragic suicide. My heart goes out to his family and loved ones in this time of excruciating loss. The rest of us, who loved him in our own ways, have lost a brilliant talent, a comedic master, and a deeply moving dramatic actor whose roles in Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poet’s Society and one of my personal favorites for sentimental reasons – Flubber – will live on and never be forgotten. Right now, though, it’s hard to get farther than...

08 Sep

Posted at 21:46h in Film by

Robin Williams’ heartbreaking suicide brings depression and suicide to the forefront of everyone’s mind, along with remembrances of his many film roles. Ironically, Williams won his only Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1998 for his emotional performance as Sean Maguire, a gifted, underachieving therapist who’s challenged to reach an intellectually brilliant, yet deeply troubled young man in Good Will Hunting.  In real life, Williams’s decision to end his life leaves many unanswered questions as to why he was unable to get the kind of help he needed to go on. In the film, Sean’s treatment of Will Hunting (Matt Damon)...