Film: Tree of Life

No film has ever been so evocative of a childhood: walking on cans tied with thick string; torturing small amphibia and reptiles with cherry bombs and firecrackers; running chest forward, arms outstretched, into mosquito-killing DDT clouds. These were the long, languorous days of southern summers before play dates and gated communities and the expectation of kidnappers and child molesters around every corner. Without standard plot or dialogue, the observer, like the analyst, is drawn into memory with Jack (Sean Penn), invited to lean in toward his experience of sprinkler drops on the skin, ligustrum hedge tops on the fingertips, or the jarring, contemptuous shouting of a father at a mother. One immerses oneself, the visual and auditory so penetrating as to be tactile. It is dream-like, hallucinogenic, poetical.

A nipple. An eye socket. A crater on the moon. Mud pots and phosphorescent pools. Molten lava and microbials. A nipple. The protruding umbilicus of a pregnant woman. Jupiter’s moon. What do we make of creation? Of the tree of life? This film intimates the interconnectedness of all creation. But the thread of loss and trauma flies in the face of connectedness, aggravated when one suffers in isolation, disconnecting us from the fabric of life.

Jack as a middle edged man remains connected to his childhood in the drops of water and the drops of sunlight of his glass-and-steel grownup world. His luminous mother (Jessica Chastain) had urged him to “love everything.”

The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line) is a wonder, visually, and its soundtrack magnificent. That Malick was a philosophy major and a Rhodes scholar is no surprise. But Malick must be a connoisseur of great music as well, with soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat, connecting Mahler, Bach, Smetena’s Die Moldau, Holst’s The Planets, Berlioz’ Requiem, Bach, and Brahms. The mystical ‘Tree of Life’ in religion, philosophy, mythology, connects all things in spirit and evolution. It brings eternal life. Malick ambitiously illustrates this conceptual interconnectedness of the ‘Tree of Life’ in his film thusly named, juxtaposing it with a singular, 1950s, Texas family, the O’Briens. Its eldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken) questions, in whispered voiceover, God or the universe and the meaning of existence. How Malick coaxed such a veridical performance from McCracken and Laramie Eppler as R.L. is a marvel,and the cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, exquisite. This is the best picture of 2011, or, perhaps,ever.

Michael Poff comments on Hiroshima, Mon Amour

It was not oedipal conflicts that I believed remained unsuccessfully resolved. My observation was that although there were triangular features to the relationship in Hiroshima Mon Amour (see April 4, 2011) that might typically suggest Oedipal-level repetitions (i.e., references to cheated-upon third party/spouse/dead lover; Lui’s thrill at being special to Ella compared to all her past lovers; the recurring subject of lying; the central theme of sleeping with the forbidden/the enemy), much more obvious, in this case, were the effects of the later trauma in early adulthood (the pervasive dissociative affect, the intensity to the repetition compulsion, an inexpressible humiliation and rage isolated behind the glassy “reasonable” defense). In fact, in the absence of other history, it was only the massive quality of that trauma that made more understandable the pervasive regressive and pre-oedipal emotional atmosphere of the affair (i.e., repetitive fantasies of annihilation by being consumed/devoured; borderline psychotic-like confusion of past/present, loss of self/other boundaries, etc.). Elle’s early refrain, “Without a record, there’s only reconstruction”, highlighted for me the parallel between her ‘remembering’, first in action then in words, with Lui and reconstruction in analysis. I see no inherent problem calling this a co-construction (But I was using Elle’s words.) so long as some conceptual principle for the asymmetrical relationship and the ideal of (relative) neutrality on the part of the analyst is preserved for the protection of the patient. It was Lui’s reference to what he will remember of Elle when he is compelled by habit into future affairs, and Elle’s staying ‘reasonable’ for the remainder of their relationship after he slaps her just as she risked expressing her anger, that signaled the unresolved quality of the problems each was attempting some mastery over with the affair. I agree wholeheartedly with you that there was much caring in the ‘play’ and healing (for Elle, most obviously, given her resolution in the end to return home to Nevere) that came of the encounter between the two lovers. Michael Poff MA, MSW

Hiroshima, Mon Amour

The beautifully rendered Hiroshima, Mon Amour, directed by Alain Resnais, screenplay by Marguerite Duras, is a 1959 French film which, along with Truffaut’s 400 Blows and Godard’s Breathless ushered in French New Wave film. It is dreamily (without sequential time or cause and effect) shot and its script is poetical with its repetition of phrases. Beautiful and moving to any viewer, it may be especially so for the contemporary psychoanalyst in the way it speaks to the power of the witnessing of trauma.

We never know from the film, nor hear, the names of the two protagonists. Elle (Emmanuele Riva), a French actress (in Hiroshima to shoot a film about peace), suffered the loss of her wartime, German lover, then was ostracized by the residents of her hometown Nevers for this love; and Lui (Eiji Okuda), a Japanese architect, lost his entire family of origin and his hometown on August 6, 1945. Their personal traumas have for their backdrop the trauma of nations.

Opening the film, the two lovers entwined, the ashes of nuclear devastation on their skin transforming into perspiration, Lui responds to Elle’s narrative, telling her: you “remember nothing.” (For how could she possibly remember Hiroshima?) Later in the film, Lui says to Elle, “Tell me more.” And he is jubilant [reminiscent of the therapist’s privilege] that he is the only one who has ever heard her story. Elle’s later, second narrative includes, “One day, I’ll remember nothing,” [i.e. will be haunted no longer]. Only then does she consider returning to Nevers [facing the unknowable]. The peace march of the film within the film foreshadows Elle’s leaning toward healing. She finds Lui (He tells her that she gives him “a tremendous desire to love”) and re-finds “impossible love”. This time she does not have to bear it alone. Therapy, likewise, is not so much the ‘impossible profession’ as an ‘impossible love.’

Hiroshima, Mon Amour, shown April 3, 2001, was the ultimate film in the 2010-11 Film Series Developing Passions, cosponsored by the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc and the Humanities Institute at the University of South Florida. The discussants were USF Humanities Associate Professor, Amy Rust, and local Freudian analyst, Michael Poff. Rust, in elaborating French New Wave films, also explicated components of contemporary psychoanalysis: The story [content] is subordinate to style [way of relating]; There is no omniscient viewer; Ambiguity is embraced; Subjective reality is privileged and the social history of the bombing of Hiroshima turns into the personal history of Elle and of Lui, and each’s interpretation of the world is negotiated alongside historic events.

Poff, too, saw the healing themes both between two persons (Elle and Lui) and two peoples (social historical context), but interpreted the film as “a failed attempt to resolve old trauma” referring to the Oedipus complex (both Elle and Lui deceive their respective spouses with this brief affair) and to transference, Elle’s putting of the past relationship (with the German soldier) onto the present one (with Lui), and to reconstruction (Freud)of the past. [Instead, I delighted in Lui’s capacity to ‘play’ (ala Winnicott) in the space between himself and Elle, wearing the attributions of her dead lover as part of the witnessing, and healing in relationship, which Elle requires. I found it a beautiful example, not of reconstruction, but of co-construction.]

Aviva, my Love

The penultimate film in this year’s Film Series: Developing Passions, co-sponsored by the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc , and The Humanities Institute at USF, was Aviva, My Love (screenplay and direction by Shemi Zarhin) a poignant, often humorous, Israeli film about family in which an aspiring writer struggles to manage all the competing demands in her life: her unemployed husband, her three, sullen children, her eccentric mother, her infertile sister and brother-in-law, and the bills. Men in the audience felt sad for Aviva. Women in the audience saw Aviva as doing what women have always done to keep a family together.

The film opens where an aging and corpulent dentist tells Aviva (Asi Levi) that her daughter’s dental bills will be forgotten if Aviva will take off her shirt. [I found it disconcerting that the audience laughed here.] This scene foreshadows a more significant form of prostitution [and sets the emotional tone for the women of the audience]. Aviva refuses the dentist, but not Oded (Sason Gabai), a writing professor who, ten years previously, had written a best seller.

Aviva, never having attended college herself, is a writer, writing in her head as she prepares food at the hotel restaurant where she is employed as a chef, writing in her notebooks as her children at home argue, TV blaring. Aviva is uncertain of her talent. Though never published, her husband Moni (Dror Keren) and her sister Anita (Rotem Abuhav) refer to her, encouragingly, as the “famous writer.” Younger, envious Anita types Aviva’s scribbled stories.

Throughout history, women with mouths to feed have been forced to sell their bodies or their souls. Aviva stumbles, then, recovers herself, to find her voice, and, at the end of the film, she writes now in first person.

Aviva, My Love was discussed by clinician Sheldon Wykell, LCSW and USF professor Rina Donchin. The last film in the series, Hiroshima Mon Amour, will be viewed on Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 2pm in room MDA 1097 at the USF medical school.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (ESSM) was voted the best movie of the decade by the Onion AV club [Source: http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best-films-of-the-00s,35931/] as well as the Austin Film Critics Association.

[Source:http://www.austinfilmcritics.org/2009.html]

Reviewers tend to mention the film's "emotional core" as the reason for its success. I have read many reviews of ESSM and have been more than a little bewildered by the lack of explicit reference to one particularly pivotal and precious scene.*

Joel is desperately trying to salvage his memories of Clementine from destruction. Clementine advises Joel to hide her "somewhere really buried!" We are then presented with a scene from Joel's memory of deep humiliation and shame, a memory where Joel is completely alone being bullied into submission. We see him smashing a bird with a hammer, the camera cuts away to a bird flying away from a tree. It is not the act that is so much important, but the utter loneliness and desperation of a kid with no one on his side. A scene of innocence lost. However, Joel reconstructs the memory with Clementine on his side, in the words of Alice Miller, a helping witness. Little Clementine redirects Joel firmly stating "Joel, it's not worth it, they're not worth it, come on!"

Little Joel: "I'm so ashamed."

Little Clementine:"It's OK. You're a little kid."

Joel: "I wish I knew you when I was a kid."

It is painful, humiliating memories that often keep us from connecting with others and sharing our true selves. I think its safe to say that most of us have humiliating memories, or can at least identify with the terrible act of being humiliated.

The reconstruction of the memory helps Joel let go of it. Clementine reminds him that his innocence was never really lost, after all he was only a kid.

I think this gets at the emotional core of every human being. No one likes being humiliated, and no one likes having their innocence taken away.

Sharing pain and recasting past events to restore our natural innocence is essential to healing in life and to moving forward. Even if we didn't have helping witnesses as children, we can still find them as adults, they can still witness our past -- if we are willing and able to share it -- and show us our true innocence, a feeling of which every human needs and deserves.

(* during this scene one of the most beautiful piano pieces from the film score is played, called "Peer Pressure").

by Tim LaDuca

Transliteration
"How happy are the blameless vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,
Every prayer answered, every wish resigned."

- Alexander Pope

"How happy the innocents' life, devoted to God.
Unknowing of the world, and of the world is not.
Ne'er tragedy visited, immortality awaits.
In naïveté, here come the pearly gates."

-Timothy LaDuca

Oscar Countdown: The Kids Are All Right

Recently, in a high school Congressional forum, my daughter proposed a bill that Florida allow same sex couples to adopt children. It was soundly defeated by her peers. This, despite that study after study show that children raised by same sex parents turn out to be no worse, no better adjusted, and no more or less often gay, than those raised by heterosexual couples (with the exception that children raised by lesbian couples -- probably because men are more likely to abuse children -- are less likely to be abused). The AMA, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics all agree that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child. It is also irrelevant to the child's mental health, self esteem, academic performance, and social development.

So, since children raised by same sex couples do come out alright, why then shout it out with the title The Kids Are All Right? (It is not tongue in cheek as in White Men Can’t Jump). I missed the critical acclaim boat with this film, and so do not quite understand its nomination for Best Picture. Had I not wanted to socialize with the likes of friends who like dumb movies (some even liked the incredibly boring Eat, Pray, Love), I don’t think I would ever have seen The Kids Are All Right. Some of my friends who are lesbian were incensed that Jules would cheat with a man, of all things, and, especially, that Nic and Jules would view (and so the film mention) gay sex, but not lesbian sex. Go figure.

Annette Bening (Nic) certainly is a great actress (American Beauty, 1999, unfortuitously came out the same year as Boys Don’t Cry or Bening would have won the Oscar for Best Actress) and Julianne Moore (Jules) is always lovely, but the nomination seems a token P.C. nod to same sex couples with children. This nod is despite that the movie is about forging and maintaining a precarious entity: monogamous relationships, no matter whose marriage we scrutinize. To nominate this so called “postmodern” (families now have same sex parents-- who knew?) film, directed by Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon, another film about parenting outside the mainstream, which held my interest a longer), reminds me of when Kramer vs. Kramer won Best Picture (and Director and Actress and Actor…) because Kramer vs. Kramer depicted in 1979 such a “modern” topic of divorce and working women who might not find motherhood so wholly embracing. Welcome to the real world. That The Kids Are All Right, or even Kramer vs. Kramer, sensitively or beautifully or provocatively or skillfully deal with the topics to which the Academy gives its nod, is perhaps too subtle for me, but I felt hit over the head.

Oscar Countdown: The Fighter

It is not exactly Rocky, and though ostensibly about the fighting in the ring, The Fighter, a brilliantly understated film directed by David O. Russell, is about the fight within one's self and within the matrix of our most important relationships. It is a movie about resilience. Mickey Ward, in a similarly brilliantly understated performance by the very fine Mark Wahlberg (who was also the driving force behind the film, and one of its producers), has lived his whole life in the shadow of his older half-brother Dicky Eglund (Christian Bale), his overpowering mother Alice (unrelentingly played by the superb Melissa Leo, of Frozen River and TV’s Homicide, from which she was fired—perhaps because real women cops without make-up and heels don’t exist, in TV land , anyway), and his seven uncouth sisters. [I kept thinking that the seven dwarves had taken up with the wicked stepmother.] Micky fights his way back from repeated losses in the ring, but more importantly, repeated losses to his sense of self vis a vis his family, for Alice repeatedly fails to have a ‘gleam in her eye’ for Micky: “Why can’t you be happy for me?”

Micky’s mom, and his initial manager, Alice demands accommodation from all her children, retaliating with rejection when one of her daughters dares to offer a different perspective. Micky tells Alice, “Can this be my fight, Alice, for once?” and “…I thought you were my mother, too.” Alice and a small coterie of fans see Dicky (because he, also once a boxer and intial trainer for Micky, allegedly knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard in the ring) as “the pride of Lowell” (once a textile manufacturing town that peaked at above 100,000 people) despite that he is now a skinny, skittish crackhead.

Bale’s performance dominates the movie and garnered, rightly so, the Oscar nomination. Dicky, in a parallel process, overshadows Wahlberg off screen as well for the Academy often goes for the performer who, by playing the outlandish or over the top character, stretches the limits of range (e.g. Theron in Monster or Hoffman in Rainman). Dicky, too, fights his way back, from addiction. Micky gains his confidence, and the movie triumphs. Even the cliché about how the love of a good woman (Charlene Flemming, played by Amy Adams, of Doubt, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) is so seamlessly woven-- after all, this whole film is based on a true story-- that we are pleasingly satisfied. It is a gem of a movie.

Oscar Countdown: Winter’s Bone

Sometimes when I think back on certain movies, I see them in my mind’s eye as shot in monochrome, much like I imagine the grey ash of nuclear winter. It is how The Road, I think, should have been shot. Of Enemy at the Gate I remember muddy grays. Bleakly monochromatic is also how I remember Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone. But the bleakness of Winter’s Bone cannot mask its beauty. The mythical quest and unwavering performance of Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly is anything but bleak or monochromatic. At the heart of Winter’s Bone (adapted for screen by Anne Rosellini and director Debra Granik from Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name, and which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundown Film Festival)is a heroic seventeen year old girl who must find her bail-jumping father, or his body, to save her younger siblings, her mentally ill mother, and herself from eviction.

Mythical heroes exhibit unusual courage or strength [of character] or devotion. In her journey to achieve the difficult task set before her, Ree Dolly exhibits all of these. Like Antigone seeking her brother’s corpse, she is unflinchingly determined; she, like Hercules, endures many trials; and like Orpheus, she enters the Underworld, here of both methamphetamine cooking, Ozarks’ poverty and of death. She uses her wits and she is, with grace, aided from unexpected quarters. Ebert and others ask incredulously how could this courageous and determined girl spring from a mentally disabled mother and a meth-cooking father? To that I answer that mystery of origin is the very origin of heroes.

Just like a movie-goer suspends disbelief in order to immerse one’s self in the world of the film [I like to sit close and have the screen fill my peripheral vision], so, too, does the psychotherapist immerse herself in the patient’s world, accepting the psychic reality of what is presented. Worlds as foreign to us as the isolated culture of the back country Ozarks must become, for the therapist, our familiar, if only intermittant, home. The patient’s quest, and ours, just like the hero’s, is a journey of self discovery, which entails overcoming mythical monsters [many, internal], to achieve, as Joseph Campbell noted about heroes, knowledge or new abilities. Sometimes the most salient new ability is the way one is with others.

Oscar Countdown: The King's Speech

In a film about one man’s struggle to find his voice and about the talented (and intersubjective) speech therapist who helps him to do so, we find the contemporary analytic attitude of the psychotherapeutic consulting room. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth as “Bertie”/Prince Albert/King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as the failed actor/speech therapist Lionel Logue enter into a relationship whose endeavor can succeed only through mutual recognition, no easy task for a patient who is used to subjects of the Crown, not those who would be subjects of independent action, desire, and will. Not only does Logue insist on recognition and otherness, he also balances compassion for Bertie’s plight. Logue asks about earliest memories, discusses the Prince’s childhood and understands his anger and humiliation. Whether sharing fears or shouting obscenities, Logue allows for play, spontaneity, and creativity, opening the space to where Bertie’s speech is stutter-free.

Just as we set aside the transgressions, and sometimes heinous crimes, of our patients in order to be useful to them and to experience the world from their perspective, so we need, in The King’s Speech, to set aside historical context. The Monarch King George VI stood for an Empire which subjugated nations while colonizing one quarter of the planet, and Prime Minister Chamberlain, in a failed appeasement, conceded to Hitler in the Munich Pact. Then we can watch, with immense enjoyment, this sometimes humorous, sometimes emotional, historical film about one individual’s struggle to reach his potential. The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper, is the frontrunner for the Oscars, having garnered twelve nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Helena Bonham Carter as the supportive wife Queen Elizabeth, the mother of Elizabeth (II) and Margaret.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

The New Year brings ‘Oscar Fever’ when film buffs anticipate which actors and films (of 2010) will be nominated. On Sunday, January 9, 2011, at the Film Series “Developing Passions,” cosponsored by The Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc and The Humanities Institute at USF, I had the opportunity to revisit the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and bestowing the Oscar on William Hurt for Best Actor. Kiss of the Spider Woman is set in a prison cell in South America where two men, one arrested for homosexual acts (Luis Molina/William Hurt), the other (Valentin Arregui/Raul Julia) a political prisoner, are, as clinical psychologist David Baker, PhD notes, transformed by one another. To pass the time, Luis weaves tales from old films he recalls and embellishes, tales disdained by Valentin for their bourgeois love and fascist propaganda. But in every tale Valentin imagines his wealthy, former lover Marta (Sonia Braga) as the heroine, Leni or the Spider Woman. The two men, at first so different, eventually reach a meeting of minds.

Discussant Silvio Gaggi, PhD described the use of meta-theater to highlight the characters, movies embedded in the movie, a stratification of visual images like Warhol’s Marilyn: a series of lithographs from a drawing from a photo from a negative. He noted the changing interplay of the two characters: who is the escapist, who the realist? David Baker, PhD described how film can be used to illuminate the unconscious, and how Kiss of the Spider Woman so aptly parallels the psychoanalytic situation (two people in a room together; both become observers of their lives, seeing things via the other that they might never have otherwise seen, and both are changed and grow). In Kiss of the Spider Woman, both men must step out of themselves and, more importantly, be affected-in a two person psychological process- by the other, to be transformed. Baker pointed out that beauty stems from imagination, not from linear thinking or from action, and that a sense of beauty is required for transformation. Love, he said, is an act of imagination, and imagining [the forward edge] something more for a patient moves the psychoanalytic process along.

Kiss of the Spider Woman was directed by Hector Babenco and adapted from Manuel Puig’s novel of the same name by Leonard Schrader.

Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society And Humanities Institute Film Series: Developing Passions: LOVE AND ANARCHY

In Love and Anarchy, Italian director Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties, Swept Away) brings us the romantic notion of love triumphing over personal politics. This notion calls into question the age old misogynistic idea that women divert men from their important worldly tasks, and overpower men with their potent sexuality. Much like the existential angst of death looming over all of us, death comes at the end of Love and Anarchy, and so makes Tonio’s (Giancarlo Giannini, who won Best Actor in 1973 at Cannes for this role) and Tripolina’s (Lina Polito) one normal day in the countryside so poignant.

In the film, Tonio learns as a boy (from a beloved, old, anti-fascist) what an anarchist is. His mother, with her pretense of a rope around her neck foreshadowing his fate, draws the picture of an anarchist more acutely. As a man, Tonio travels to the capital, and we see Rome in all its grandeur, skylines and statues. Tonio, however, seeks out its alleys and brothels, one in particular with Salome (Mariangela Melato), with whom he meets to execute her plan to assassinate Mussolini. [Salome wants Mussolini’s head on a platter, so to speak.]

Tonio, a farmer, and somewhat the country bumpkin made ugly with freckles or pockmarks, is out of his element. There is humor in his discomfort around women. Though Tonio can barely utter a word, he is very much aware of the swinging buttocks exiting down the brothel’s hallway. Perhaps out of pity, or perhaps to ensure Tonio’s cooperation, Salome urges Tonio to stay quiet. Just as with a hungry kitten, she says she is happy to satisfy him: that way it’s over with and he can get his head back on track.

Salome, during a day of comic idyllism in the countryside -- with Tonio,Tripolina,(another prostitute) and the high ranking black shirt Spatoletti -- believes Spatoletti cares for her enough to be duped by her wiles. Spatoletti first checks out the church square where Mussolini is to visit (and is to be assassinated), then the party travels on to a country café, where we see Spatoletti for the villain he is, threatening the proprietor for the wait, and misogynistic with women. Tonio too, scouts out the square, then falls asleep in a field as if without a care. Later he and Tripolina make love, falling in love. Tripolina had tried to make it a business transaction, but Tonio is loving and gentle. Tonio seems everything Spatoletti is not, even compassionate with an alley cat.

In his room, Tonio practices with a gun in the mirror, but the room seques to a carnival shooting gallery. Next we see the more literal ‘carnival’ of prostitutes at the brothel pedaling their wares, tits and winks, flirting and insults. But the concomitant fascist gathering has detained all the swells. Tonio enters and seems shocked to see Tripolina at work; he pays and takes her upstairs while the Madam insists they hurry, for it is rush hour. Tonio entreats Tripolina to stay with him for two days before he must go away forever. He reveals his plan and Tripolina asks if Tonio is an anarchist. He replies that someone has to say 'basta!' (enough) and he will do it.

Death is again foreshadowed as Salome, Tonio, and the Madam transport a dying patron to the cemetery. Salome and Tonio fight about the anarchist’s cause, and Tonio confesses his fear (Salome retorts that fascists are not scared) and how he inadvertently became involved in the cause: delivering a suitcase to the comrades of/ for a dying friend. Salome, both compassionate and taunting, calls him “Saint Antonio” and foreshadows death again: “They’ll beat you to death and no one will know.”

Tonio, in bed, considers his plan. Tonio and Tripolina make love in the dark, and we again see the rooftops of Rome. As Tonio sleeps, Tripolina, after praying to the Virgin Mary, sits over him like a guardian. Salome has set the alarm clock, but she and Tripolina fight about waking Tonio. Tripolina says no cause is worth Tonio dying, but Salome thinks it is better to die like a dog than live like one. Salome asks what would happen if all women stopped their soldiers [what, indeed?], then relenting, agrees with Tripolina, remarking, “They are right, never trust a whore.”

Tonio is awakened by the sound of the marching band below. He strikes Tripolina for not awakening him. As the black shirts arrive downstairs, Tonio bursts in to confess, and starts firing at the police. Once out of bullets, he runs into the street where he is punched and kicked by soldiers and sailors before being taken away. Salome shouts: "He was a poor guy with a big heart."

In a well-appointed office, where the statue of a wolf suckling two infants (the founders of Rome)is displayed, Tonio is beaten and threatened, but he will not name names. The news reports that an unknown man, in a fit of madness, shot at police during a routine inspection, and died violently beating his own head against a wall.


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This Film Series, Developing Passions, is a collaboration of the Humanities Institute and the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc. and free to the public. All films in this monthly line-up will are on Sundays at 200pm in MDA 1097 at the USF Medical Center. All films will be discussed with the audience by a local university scholar and by a local clinician. Tomorrow, October 17, 2010, Ang Lee’s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman will be viewed and discussed.


Silvio Gaggi, PhD, Director of the Humanities Institute, and Robert Porter, PhD, local psychologist, discussed Love and Anarchy on September 12, 2010.
Gaggi noted how Love and Anarchy portrayed anarchy as a romantic idea, where the father figure is killed with the hope that men could live free and equal, the way nature intended. Gaggi also noted in this film how a scene often begins with a panoramic view, then shrinks to the close up. [I preferred the Opposite approach of the camera, as when the face of famished Tonio is eating heartily, and the scene widens to show him surrounded at the table by prostitutes. While either approach would lend itself to the importance of context, each has a different impact. ]

Robert Porter, PhD in psychology, and clinical discussant, highlighted the theme of adolescence and the struggle to oppose ones parents, who, like fascists, are seen to oppose freedom. But rebellion itself incurs responsibility, and new constraints of maturity, as adolescents grow up. Porter noted, too, that fascists allowed their own hedonism while disallowing it for others. Though a female director, a more complex theme of misogyny exists in the film: Salome in the end was too weak to be an anarchist. Women are seen as weaker and potentially dangerous, distracting men from their role as soldier or anarchist.

The audience was divided on whether or not the prostitutes in the film had real power over their clients.[Perhaps women’s power lies in the ability to foster connectedness, not submission, just as real consolidation of identity (the developmental task of adolescence) is better achieved by transcending doer-done to dynamics of violence and fostering an appreciation of difference. It was love that drove both Salome and Tonio to profess their allegiance to anarchy, as both wanted to avenge someone, killed by fascists, whom they loved. When Tripolina and Salome decide not to wake Tonio, they choose love over anarchy. ]

Lycia Alexander-Guerra, MD

Academy Awards 2010

Daunted by the Academy’s nomination this year of ten films for the honor of Best Picture, some that I might still choose to never see, I will not be blogging about the nominees this season [despite my great love for the Coen Brothers and for Tarantino] in this category, save one, Up in the Air. I will also say something about A Single Man, of which I think the Academy mistakenly failed to include as a nominee for Best Picture, along with their oversight of Julianne Moore for Best Supporting Actress.


When one in the psychoanalytic field thinks of trauma and loss, one thinks of the idea of a relational home which serves to mitigate both. Shelley Doctors notes that Relational therapists are attuned to how two together interact, what is uniquely co-created from this interaction, and, yes, what meaning is made of it. Being in relationship with another can facilitate the capacity of being with; being with our painful feelings, and, as Doctors, adds, the perception of the other as receptive creates an atmosphere “in which experience may be known and shared;” what Hazel Ipp says permits “ a sense of release, revitalization, and enhanced connection.” Robert Stolorow also intimates the importance of a relational home when he writes that “Painful emotional experiences become enduringly traumatic in the absence of an intersubjective context within which they can be held and integrated.”

Up in the Air (directed by the very adroit Jason Reitman of Juno and inspired by the novel by Walter Kirn) is about a hired gun (George Clooney), who performs the dirty work [no, this is not Michael Clayton again] as the firing agent for companies which, though downsizing, want to avoid breaking the heart-breaking news to their soon to be former employees. Ryan Bingham (Clooney) is connected to no one, has no significant other, and has little contact with his family of origin. Nonetheless, he almost blithely dispenses advice and encouragement, and solves problems on a need to need basis. Many of those devastated by job loss in this film are portrayed by people who are not actors but who have lost, in their real lives, their jobs. It is somewhat precious that they now get to respond to their, albeit fictional, hang men. What is most striking about these real people are their explanations, at the end of the film, about what kept them going despite the loss of a huge part of their days and identities: unequivocally it is their loved ones, their relational homes. This is in vivid contrast to Bingham, and to George Falconer ( A Single Man).


In A Single Man (adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s novel and boasts fashion designer Tom Ford as first time director), Falconer (Colin Firth) has lost a sixteen year emotional home when his lover was killed in a car crash. The victim’s family, eschewing its son’s homosexuality, did not even allow Falconer to attend the funeral of his beloved. And, because this is 1962,because Falconer is a teacher (professor at a California college), or perhaps just English, he must keep his homosexuality a secret, both falconer and captive falcon. This culturally and self imposed isolation leaves him consequently having no one, save Julianne Moore, with whom to share his loss. There is no relational home which might serve to mitigate overwhelming grief.

While Up in the Air aptly captures the cold starkness of hotel rooms (even those upgraded for the million, or ten, mile club) befitting of a man unconnected, A Single Man has the beautiful cinematography of a period piece (1962! with JFK and finned cars), sometimes shot in black and white, sometimes in dreamscape. Is it strange that I found both movies so uplifting? Bingham, for his temerity and generosity despite having no current connections? and Falconer for his ability to see beauty moment by moment despite, perhaps because of, a great loss?

Lycia Alexander-Guerra, MD

Yale Strom and Michael Poff to Discuss the Hidden Victims of the Holocaust, April 10, 2010

Thanks to everyone for making this year's film series a success. Don't miss our March 28, 2010 event at 2pm, University of South Florida, College of Medicine, MDA 1097 (Behind the Medical Clinic)

Film: A Secret
Scholar: Madeline Camara, Ph.D., USF Associate Professor of World Languages
Clinician: Lycia Alexander-Guerra, M.D. Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst

About A Secret: A Secret follows the saga of a Jewish family in post-World War II Paris. Francois, a solitary, imaginative child discovers a dark family secret that ties his family s history to the Holocaust and shatters his illusions forever. Adapted from psychoanalyst, Philippe Grimbert`s celebrated truth-inspired novel Memory.

About Dr. Camara:

Born in Havana, 1957. BA in Hispanic Lang and Lit in University of Havana, MA in Women Studies in Colegio de Mexico, Ph.d in Hispanic Lang and Lit in SUNY at Stony Brook. Has taught at University of La Havana, UNAM, and San Diego State University, California. Was the founder and editor of literary journal Letras Cubanas, in La Habana (1986-1992). Presently she writes a literary column for El Nuevo Herald. She has received a Rockefeller Resident Fellowship in the Humanities in Florida International University, in 1997, as well as a Fullbright Award Border Program in 2001.She is the author, among others, of Vocacion de Casandra (NY, Peter Lang: 2000) and co-editor of Cuba: the Ellusive Nation (Gainsville, Florida UP, 2000). Next books are La letra rebelde: estudios de escritoras cubanas (Miami:Universal, 2002) and La memoria hechizada (Barcelona:Icaria, 2002) Her present research deals with the image of the mulata as an icon for Cuban identity.

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On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Join Yale Strom and Michael Poff as they discuss the hidden victims of the Holocaust


Sunday, April 11, 2010 *Program Begins at 2 PM*

Films: And the Violins Stopped Playing and Purple Triangles
Presenter: Yale Strom, Artist-in-Residence, San Diego State University
Clinician: Michael Poff, MSW, Psychoanalyst

Purple Traingles: Excellent documentary showing that it wasn't just the Jews persecuted during the Holocaust, Jehovah's Witnesses were also victims. They had all kinds of underground printing operations and even some of the songs that we sing presently at the Kingdom Hall were composed in the concentration camps. And the Violins Stopped Playing: Based on a true story, Ramati's novel depicts the atrocities committed by the Germans against the Gypsies during World War II. In the early 1940s, Roman Mirga learns that Gypsies in Germany are being rounded up and shipped to "relocation camps" for extermination. He warns his clan about the impending danger but is able to convince only a handful of them to flee with his family to Hungary. From Publishers Weekly

YALE STROM

“He's a gifted photographer and author, a talented documentary filmma

ker and has his own klezmer band... Strom's multifaceted career is a wonder, and his work schedule is downright fiendish.”

- New York Jewish Week.

“An award-winning musician, author, filmmaker and scholar, this maverick does so many things with such great skill and vision that he's in a league of his own."- George Varga - Music Critic of the San Diego Union-Tribune. " “Through his art, Strom has brought back his spiritual ancestors."

- Time Magazine.

Yale Strom is one of the world's leading ethnographer-artist of klezmer and Roma music and history. Strom's klezmer research was instrumental in forming the repertoire of his klezmer band, Hot Pstromi, based in New York and San Diego. Since organizing his band in 1981, he has composed original New Jewish music that combines klezmer with Khasidic melodies, as well as Roma, jazz, classical, Balkan, Arabic and Sephardic motifs. Strom's compositions range from several quartets to a full symphony. These works have been performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, and the Ostrava Philharmonic of the Czech Republic. He has composed original music for the Denver Center’s production of Tony Kushner's The Dybbuk ; as well as composing all the original music for the National Public Radio series, Fiddlers, Philosophers & Fools: Jewish Short Stories from the Old World to the New, hosted by Leonard Nimoy. In addition, Strom has composed music for The History Channel, ESPN, and countless other TV offerings. Yale’s thirteen CDs run the gamut of traditional klezmer to "new" Jewish jazz. His CD's have received major rave reviews and been featured on Top Ten Album of the Year lists. In 2006, he was appointed artist-in-residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University. Prior to this appointment, Strom taught for many years at New York University.

As a collaborator Strom has had numerous world-renowned partners, including Andy Statman, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Mark O'Connor, Alicia Svigals, Joel Rubin, Hankus Netsky, Peter Sprague, Samir Chatterjee, Salman Ahmad, Gavin Rossendale, Damian Draghici and Kalman Balogh, to name but a few. With Salman Ahmad, Strom is cofounder of the world music ensemble Common Chords and together performed at the United Nations General Assembly in the recent "Concert for Pakistan". He is also the first klezmer violinist to be invited to instruct master classes at the Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camps.

Strom has directed seven award-winning documentary films: "At the Crossroads"; "The Last Klezmer" (winner best ecumenical film at the Berlin International Film Festival); "Carpati: 50 miles, 50 Years" (Emmy award); "L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin!"; "Klezmer on Fish Street" (Special Jury Selection, Palm Beach International Film festival; "Man From Munkatsh" (produced for Hungary's Duna TV). He was the first documentary filmmaker in history to be given his own run at Lincoln Center's prestigious Walter Reade Theatre, where his films broke box-office records. Currently, Strom is in pre -production on the feature film "Canaries" and the documentary "Detroit: In Black and White". He co-directed the feature documentary “The Harry Agganis Story”, now in post-production.

Strom 's original stage play . . . from man. . . to beast... to crawling thing , was given a fully-staged workshop in June of 2001 by the Streisand Festival ( La Jolla , California ). His play "The Education of Hershel Grynszpan" was workshopped by the San Diego Rep and the North Coast Rep as well as in New York City , Connecticut and Los Angeles . Yale was featured in the May 31, 2004 issue of Time Magazine for this play, and the scholarship behind it.

As a photographer, Strom has exhibited extensively. His solo photo exhibit The Roma of Ridgewood , about Gypsy communities in Queens, New York, was mounted at the Queens Museum of Art and was the first of its kind in NYC. He has had numerous solo and group photo exhibits (depicting Jewish and Roma life) throughout the U.S. and Europe. His photos are part of many collections including Beth Hatefusoth, The Skirball Museum, The Jewish Museum of NYC, The Frankfurt Jewish Museum and the The Museum of Photographic Arts.

Strom was the guest curator for the Eldridge Street Project's "A Great Day on Eldridge Street". Strom conceived this idea for a musical and photographic celebration of the newly restored landmarked Eldridge Street Synagogue in October 12-14, 2007 with a parade, a historic archival photo shoot, numerous panels and performances and a New York state-wide tour. The historic photo is now available as a poster from the Eldridge Street Synagogue in NYC.

Strom is a dedicated educator and has lectured extensively all over the world. His lectures and concerts at schools across the United States have ranged from how kids can use art to further their understanding of their ever changing world, to an examination of how music can be used to reach across various cultural, ethnic, racial and religious divides, and how to be a professional artist.

Strom's work as an author includes "The Book of Klezmer: The History, The Music, The Folklore" ( Chicago Review Press, 2002), a 400-page history with original photos and sheet music gathered by Strom during his sixty-plus ethnographic trips to Central and Eastern Europe. "A Wandering Feast: A Journey Through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe" written in collaboration with his wife, Elizabeth Schwartz, is part cookbook, part travelogue (Jossey-Bass, 2005). He is also the author of "The Absolutely Complete Klezmer Songbook" (URJ Press, 2006). His Young Adult books: "Uncertain Roads: Searching for the Gypsies" and "Quilted Landscapes: Immigrant Youth in America Today" have been critically used in schools throughout America. His first illustrated children's book, "The Wedding That Saved A Town" (Kar-Ben, 2008) won the Best Children's Illustrated Book award from the San Diego Library Association. Additionally, he was the author of the klezmer edition of the prestigious "Music Minus One" series of instructional books with accompanying CD's, as well as numerous other photo documentary books. Strom’s music and gregarious personality has been able to reach the multi-ethnic youth of America today and make a genuine difference in opening up their ears, eyes, and hearts.