CINEMA AS THERAPY Loss is an inescapable reality of life, and individuals need to develop a capacity to grieve in order to mature and live life to the full. Yet most western movie audiences live in cultures that do not value this necessary process and filmgoers finding themselves deeply moved by a particular film are often left wondering why. In Cinema as Therapy, John Izod and Joanna Dovalis set out to fill a gap in work on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema. Looking at films including M illion Dollar Baby, The Son’s Room, Birth and T he Tree of Life, Cinema as Therapy offers an understanding of how deeply emotional life can be stirred at the movies. Izod and Dovalis note that cinema is a medium that engages people in a virtual dialogue with their own and their culture’s unconscious, more deeply than is commonly thought. By analysing the meaning of each film and the root cause of the particular losses featured, the authors demonstrate how our experiences in the movie theatre create an opportunity to prepare psychologically for the inevitable losses we must all eventually face. In recognising that the movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and the therapy room, the reader sees how it becomes a sacred space where people can encounter the archetypal and ease personal suffering through laughter or tears, without inhibition or fear, to reach a deeper understanding of themselves. Cinema as Therapy will be essential reading for therapists, students and academics working in film studies and looking to engage with psychological studies in depth as well as filmgoers who want to explore their relationship with the screen. The book includes a glossary of Jungian and Freudian terms, which enhances the clarity of the text and the understanding of the reader. John Izod is Emeritus Professor of screen analysis at the University of Stirling. He has published several books, including Screen, Culture, Psyche: A Post-Jungian Approach to Working with the Audience (Routledge). Joanna Dovalis is a marriage and family therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology, specialising in grief work. She works in private practice in southern California, USA. This page intentionally left blank CINEMA AS THERAPY Grief and transformational fi lm John Izod and Joanna Dovalis First published 2015 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 John Izod and Joanna Dovalis The rights of John Izod and Joanna Dovalis to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Izod, John, 1940- Cinema as therapy : grief and transformational film / John Izod and Joanna Dovalis. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Loss (Psychology) in motion pictures. 2. Grief in motion pictures. 3. Bereavement–Psychological aspects. I. Dovalis, Joanna. II. Title. PN1995.9.L59I95 2015 791.43’653–dc23 2014030158 ISBN: 978-0-415-71867-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-71868-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73158-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Cenveo Publisher Services CONTENTS Acknowledgements v ii 1 I ntroduction 1 PART 1 Encountering phases of grief 11 2 B irth (2004): Eternal grieving of the spotless mind 13 3 T sotsi (2005) 34 4 M illion Dollar Baby (2004) 46 PART 2 Transitions to wholeness 61 5 T rois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) 63 6 T rois Couleurs: Blanc (1994) 79 7 T rois Couleurs: Rouge (1994) 95 vi Contents PART 3 Transcending the personal 117 8 T he Son’s Room (2001) 119 9 S pring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring (2003) 131 10 M orvern Callar (2002) 148 11 A pproaching The Tree of Life 168 12 T he Tree of Life (2011) 175 13 E nvoi 2 02 Glossary 204 References 215 Index 222 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We gratefully recognise the generous advice we received from Jana Branch, Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard, Katharina Lindner, Nadin Mai, Kathleen Morison and George Rosch. Earlier versions of certain chapters were published previously. We acknowledge with thanks their editors’ permission to republish them here. ‘ Birth: Eternal Grieving of the Spotless Mind’ in Jung and Film II: The Return ed. Christopher Hauke and Luke Hockley (London: Routledge, July 2011) 66–91. ‘T sotsi’, S pring 76 (Fall 2006) 2, 317–24. ‘M illion Dollar Baby: Boxing Grief’, Kinema 24 (Fall 2005) 5–22. ‘Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Bleu’ , T he San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal 25, 3 (Summer 2006) 49–73. ‘Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs: Blanc’, Jung Journal, 2, 3 (Summer 2008) 39–57. ‘Grieving, Therapy, Cinema and Kieslowski’s T rois Couleurs: Rouge’ , Jung Journal, 2, 4, (Fall 2008) 70–94. ‘Physician, Heal Thyself: T he Son’s Room’ , Kinema 37 (Spring 2012) 5–20. This page intentionally left blank 1 INTRODUCTION Cinema is pre-eminently the medium that engages people in a virtual dialogue with their own and their culture’s unconscious, more deeply than is commonly taken for granted. The movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and the therapy room: all are sacred spaces where people can encounter the archetypal and ease personal suffering, in the case of the cinema whether through laughter or tears, without inhibition or fear. Yet bizarrely, there is a dearth of writing from a psychological perspective on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema. The present authors propose to occupy that gap. We focus on grief for several reasons. Inescapable in life, it frequently comprises the core element of feature films, both popular and artistic. This is not accidental. Individuals need to develop the capacity to grieve in order to mature fully. Yet most Western movie audiences live in cultures that do not teach people how to engage in this necessary process. Personal growth becomes stunted, choices limited by what has been left behind. For that reason, depth therapists find that much of their work becomes devoted to clients’ unresolved grief. Archetypal symbols penetrate the emotions at a deep level and give the cinema its power to bypass the conscious state and go into the unconscious. Immersion in film viewing distracts the ego so that it disengages from its usual function as the primary filter of awareness. In fact the ego is busy anchoring itself in and assembling the story from the film’s plot (the stream of shocks provided by images, dialogue and sounds). Meanwhile, the unconscious, stimulated by symbols in the film, releases archetypal energies in the spectator’s psyche. Through their involvement in this process, spectators are freed from their usual inhibitions, which allows them to connect to their emotional lives. In identifying certain characters or familiar situations with aspects of their own lives, they project disowned parts of the self onto the screen. That enables them to receive what the screen presents them with as it reflects their own projections back at them. Cinema is thus, as we shall see, an