QUESTIONS FOR A NEW FILM DICUSSION by Julio Enrique Correa, M.D.
HYPOTHESIS
We had
proposed that “narrative family models” of storytelling evolve into good
functioning patterns by allowing all members of a group to potentially
contribute to the group narrative by fostering person-to-person communication
in order to join at the reconstruction of reality that is to be particularly
challenged at bereavement experiences that chisel family life at different
moments of its development. Otherwise such interpersonal reconstructive efforts
within family groups submit to repeat dominant social systems’ narratives
modelled as a “social model” of transmission of stories that weakens
individuals and groups in their speech mastery acquisition and enhances
dependency to social regulation of narrative, imposing stereotyped and rigid
versions of reality denying the nature of bereavement (Correa & Hobbs,
2009). In the previous analysis of 2014 films made during this year 2015 in
this Blog we had observed a consistent repetition of a continuous social narrative
pressure over the film protagonists attempting to withdraw them from their
personal scopes up to make them become outsiders of their wills and roles, therefore
edging nonsense and/ or self destruction if they finally loose the train of
contemporary accomplishments that specifically deny the bereavement experience
as much as praise the skills to remain in touch with the social skills assuring
success, whatsoever the social, political or technological means to achieve it:
1.
In
"Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" (2014), Riggan
Thomson, a Hollywood’s superhero actor (extraordinarily played by Michael Keaton, former Batman series) subjected to highly pressing social context narratives intends to re-start his career by challenging Broadway
with the direction and acting of a Raymond Carver story «What We Talk About When We Talk About Love» at a Manhattan first class
theatre. Rather than his whole actor career, what’s at stake is just another
duel asking to test right or wrong all Riggan’s emotional systems already
questioned by his former wife stressing his permanent need to be admired
–instead loved-, as well as by his daughter with whom he quarrels about the
importance he finds in the play that he is going to release in a Broadway
theater. “This is important to me! OK,
not to you nor your cynical friends whose only ambitions are to go viral´. To me this, God!, is my career,
to find to do some work that actually means something… - That means something to
who?!- asks his daughter, posing him the facts determining his actual failure
in recognizing his loss of position as a contemporary actor –maintained as a
phantom of the past recalled by TV series followers, only perhaps to be saved
as a repetition of a new Birdman series-, which are out of the scene by now
[Riggan’s office window seems to open to the Majestic theatre of New York,
displaying a Phantom of the Opera mask ad]. -Let’s face it Dad! You’re not
doing this in the sake of art. You’re doing this because you want to feel
relevant again! Oh! Guess what?! There is an entire room out there where people
fight to become relevant every single day… And you act as it doesn`t exist… And who the
fuck are you?! You’re the one that doesn’t exist! You’re doing this because
you’re scared to death why the rest of us you don’t matter… You know what?
You’re not important. Get used to it!-. Caught by unprocessed mourning due to
marriage breakdown collapsing his nuclear family, Riggan talks to his ex-wife
in the dressing room during the intermission of the premiere of his play at
Broadway and remembers that after their last anniversary party before
separating, he went into the sea attempting suicide, for which he was saved by
chance by jellyfish that started to burn his body. He regrets for having been
separated and not kept together with their daughter “Sam” in the three members
of the family, also blaming himself for not acting as a father the latter
needed instead his pathetic 3D “viral” sensation. In the following scene where
he as play protagonist puts forward the question that entitles the play: “What
we talk about when we talk about love?”, he shoots himself in the real while
playing the part in the play. The skyscraper environment offers both a way to
escape and to die by flying in the skies as sadly was seen on 9.11 when
desperate people jumped to the void from the WTC towers.
2.
“Into the woods” centers in the correction of the protagonists’ individual
archetypal behaviors into group articulated behaviors that are to be ruled by
two new not explicit commandments in the father/ children
family interactions that are brought as a moral at
the end of this film story. A new father children caring role substitutes
for the mothers’ traditional roles at the same time that seems to specifically
deny her loss or absence: the first commandment “Do not
abandon/ neglect the children” would attempt to repair contemporary children
bonds with their missing parents by securing the father to fulfill both father/
mother roles instead to leave them forsaken and completely alone, whether the
second masked commandment “Do not
abandon/ neglect nature, the environment” seems more a punishment
coming from loss of mothers (from all characters), together with the castration
of mother nature (the chop of the tall female "giant" tree symbolizing
logging): no fairies nor elves will now preserve nature or environment from
witches threat of earth condemnation to the denial of preservation;
3.
"Leviathan”
depicts the context of harsh social
and physical environment in the shores of the Russian northern lands. Condemned
by post-totalitarian society proceedings as a supernatural force that reminds Bava Yaga
in the Russian folk tales which seem to hint the cruel winters and predators, present
as well at the core of cruel tyrannies of men; a decent worker is pushed out
from his house, his family and environment and left alone isolated in prison,
betrayed by his lawyer friend that was to defend his property rights, by his
wife that finally commits suicide jumping from the cliffs into the rocky shores
and by his
neighbours accusing him of killing his wife, hence at last driving his beloved
son from a previous marriage into an orphan institution. Although environment
maintains a silent spectator of this human drama subjected to social-political
power systems behaving as an antediluvian monster, it would be worthwhile to
parallel discussions of environmental risk with consideration of the risk on the
ecological human cultural spaces that are to be threatened by different models
of contemporary social narratives generating fast and massive cultural or
technological changes by enhancing the intrusion of social narratives (Correa
& Hobbs, 2009) which exert
disruptive effects on the ways human narrative is constructed knitting together
the personal, family, culture and diverse social groups with the environment.
4.
In “The clouds of
Sils María”, suicidal attempt reappears in the central characters challenging
the main protagonist to resist self destruction by becoming outsider of her wills and roles as further
disguising into ambiguous cultural and/or technological characters that conceal personal identity. Both mature and immature women characters seem to be trapped in a
similar disconnection with the mourning process they are both experiencing
obliging both to adjust to new conditions in order to regain empowerment in the
fulfillment of their role requirements that are
needed to fit into job and social relations exigencies, if not to become secluded. So the young actress assistant woman explains the
experimented woman actress that the strategy to gain power over her by a
younger competing character in the play lays in creating a vacuum effect around
the former in order to manipulate her. Incapable
of coping with the survival challenges that are running for the experimented actress’
roles, as well for her assistant failed attempts to help her with their
accomplishment, leaves both helpless and lonely, following the path of
unexplained disappearance in the latter as well into the isolation within stage
glass boxes of actors with no interplay between them in the new play representation
of the play, or perhaps total incomprehension to play new roles in other theatrical
plays that are offered to the former, which are to remain unexplored as well it
does for the enigmatic environment reframing the plot, with no contribution for
the Self inquiries.
5.
“Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso” stresses the
profound sensitivity of the poet that turns unbearable to the esthetic judgment
of his Literary art colleagues, convinced and satisfied with the social
standards reached by the new century's progress outcomes. On his side, the poet’s
philosophical dissatisfaction together with his melancholic view seem to pour
from his very deep understanding of nature, both omnipotent and destructive as
moved by energetic drives that become independent from man's will. Defying
social narratives with elevated poetic narratives constructed amongst the
notion of a battling personal Self in contact with nature and the infinite,
Leopardi as Friedrich Nietzsche and
other solitaires (Zweig, 1951)
had assayed, develops artistic and philosophical insights by searching his
battling discomforted Self in voyages in contact with the environment.
All these five
films were selected one by one, as they appeared successively in Buenos Aires
theaters since March 2015 and accessible for internet download, chosen by same selective
criteria: 1) to have received awards in cinema festivals (“Birdman”, Oscar for the best director; Into the Woods, Awards from seven different US cinema contests; "Leviathan”, Award for Best Screenplay at 2014
Cannes Film Festival, also considered Best film of the year at the 45th International
Film Festival of India and Best Foreign Language Film award at the 72nd Golden
Globe Award; “The clouds of Sils María”, receiving Louis Delluc
Prize for Best Film in December 2014 and a best supporting actress César Award
for Kristen Stewart in February 2015; “Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”, endowing Italian actor Elio Germano
at the 71st Venice International Film Festival (2014) with the Pasinetti Award (Best Actor) and the Vittorio Veneto Award (Best Actor),
later receiving also the David di Donatello and Golden Ciak Best Actor awards (2015); 2) to staging evident urban or natural environmental
hazards that challenge in the real or in the fantasy human life survival.
As a whole three of the five films expressed the denial of bereavement experiences
by the protagonists together to praise their skills to remain in touch with the
social skills assuring success of the individual (“Birdman”, “The clouds of Sils María”) or the group (“Into the Woods”; “The clouds of Sils María”);
while two of the five films counteracted social pressure and denial of
bereavement by defying social criticism and claiming in behalf of the
individual sufferings brought by such despiteful social authorities ("Leviathan”; “Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”).
Death
perception, death premonition and death impulses would then be drives for
expressing the experiences of mourning and bereavement, stimulating depression
and melancholic mood but also triggering re-creative mechanisms for repairing
damage and understanding the loss, therefore becoming matter of conversation,
togetherness and correction amongst those close to suffering (“Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”); but censored by those denying
it ("Leviathan”; “Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”).
In the first group of films denying bereavement, environment would become
source of enormous anguish encouraging suicide or disappearance (Birdman‘s flight over New York’s
skyscrapers; Maloja snake phenomenon surrounding suicide or disappearance of diverse “Sils María” protagonists; the giant female tree chopping that squashes over the two character
mothers). In the second group accepting death and suffering in the mourning
aftermath, natural environment becomes the stage of drama, both in the cliffs
and shores with whale bones exposed to sea’s inclemency ("Leviathan”)
and in the volcano’s rage on the land or the island (“Leopardi, il giovane fabuloso”),
that the sky luminaries and earth’s plants might attempt to accompany in the
aims for soothing anguish from entire solitude
Summarizing
the studied films, all five analysis highlighted denial or else acceptance of
bereavement as a central core in the plot of the stories that confront
protagonists with anguish of death in an unavoidable very intense way that
challenges their whole previous behaviors and beliefs, that corresponds in the
philosophical context to the symbolization of the demon, as
it was described by Stefan Zweig when studying big solitaries’ literary productions as those from German authors:
Kleist – Hölderlin – Nietzsche (Zweig, 1951). The demon would become expression of masked
death instinct (enclosing death perception, death premonition and death
impulses) in the socio-cultural systems involving the personal, inter-personal,
group, social cultural sub-systems as depicted in the analysis of films on which was
constructed the present hypothesis. We
decided to check this hypothesis in the next film to be selected after the
edition of THE INFINITE POSSIBILITIES OF FINDING MEANING IN THE
POETIC NARRATIVE COMMUNICATION: "Leopardi, il
giovane favoloso" [Published in the Blog ART & ENVIRONMENT by
JULIO E. CORREA, M.D. 27/7/2015]. Therefore the new film nor its plot were
known before the construction of this hypothesis. The film selected for the
test was Felix and Meira; whose premiere at Buenos
Aires theaters occurred on 23/07/2015 although it wasn’t seen until it could be
downloaded in the internet system after editing the former commentary in the
blog and accomplishing the summary of the analytic studies that framed the
hypothesis construction.
FILM SELECTION:
Felix and Meira (French: Félix et Meira, released
in Canada 4 février
2015) is a 2014 Canadian drama film directed by Maxime Giroux. It was screened in the
Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival [TIFF] where it won
the award for Best Canadian Feature Film. Also at the Haifa
International Film Festival, Felix and Meira won the Tobias Szpancer Award for
Best Film (2014) and at the Whistler
Film Festival received four Borsos Awards (2014) –Wikipedia–. Although such awards met the
first selection criteria, no evident environmental purpose seemed to meet the
second criteria just up to the film’s end, where the snowy and frozen streets
of the two cities lodging the protagonists suddenly turn at the last scene –as
a discontinuous gap with the former narrative– into Venice channels’ waters.
PLOT:
In the first scene
various Orthodox Jewish couples seeming members of the German Jewish
community sing and cherish the Jewish religious ceremony marking the symbolic
end of the Sabbath as following rites around the wine and meal (Havdalah,
meaning 'separation' in Hebrew). Men (3) sing while moving in balance as they
stand around the table, while women (4) stay sat at their sides and children
run in the corridors. Meira is the wife or the table leader standing at the head
of the table: she serves dinner and helps with the dishes and silverware, but she expresses
boredom as the men sing and refuses to take the meal while the others eat.
She plays with the spoon under the sight of the husband that seems to
understand the attitude she is playing, although they both cross glances
without speaking at all. When alone at the table she further expresses her
disagreement with the lamp’s light that is going to be turned off.
In the second scene Félix receives massage from her sister at the
moment before entering the room where is laying in bed his father with a
terminal disease, whom he didn’t meet in the last ten years. The father
doesn’t recognize him while the son attempts to talk with him “before his
departure”, as was asked to him by his sister.
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In the third scene Félix founds Meira in a bar, that it is sat with
her baby while she colours for her a horse toy in a paper. Félix talks to the tender serving him
coffee –You know what? …bad news : my father is gonna die. Poor
guy ! –. He then approaches Meira and looking her handcraft
exclaims : -Beautiful!-. The tender man gives Meira a bag with her
purchase and then she lives the bar ; Félix stares at her through the
glass of the window.
In the following scenes are
shown interactions amongst the young jewish couple exhibiting strong
subjection of the male to the Jewish religious rites that impose
submission in the wife (Meira –Malka-
plays in the kitchen with mouse traps making noise that she likes but bothers
the husband that’s reading in another room -…Malka… Could you stop that?-, so she puts the trap in the closet
after making the trap to sound twice; the following morning since awakening
he accomplishes washing of hands
and prayer with any affective interaction with his wife;
when further he leaves and returns home there is no expression of affection
amongst them, moreover scolding at her because she has been playing music for
the child that is prohibited to listen: -“You had promised me. Since when you don’t
comply with your promises? // Take out that song! Why do you attempt to
humiliate us more yet? You know well that this song is unworthy of you”-. As
the music keeps playing, he repeats: “Let’s pause the music. And Elisheva
hasn't has to listen such distortions”. At that moment Meira faints falling
in the ground and so he replies: “Stop behaving as a girl. I know you're not dead. I
see how your chest moves”-, making Meira to responf -Impossible. I'm holding breath- (the
music continues playing).
On his side, Félix retires belongings from his father’s house after
his death and while walking in the street finds Meira with her baby and abruptly
tells her about his father’s death without any other introduction, further
asking directly to her: -May be you can tell me something about God, death,
something…?-. Meira continues walking without looking at him and so he runs
to his house and detaches a paper stuck on the entrance wall that he then
tries to handle her: -This is a gift for your girl. I draw it, like you do.
My name is Félix-. He further puts the paper painted on with salient blue
color within the car cradle and asks Meira her name, who stops him in turn
–Don’t speak to us-. But Félix insists –Could you give me an advice? You are
religious… Me…just I don’t know what I am…-. –I am sorry for your father- replies
Meira, and keeps on walking.
When Félix is at home he looks to an envelope written in block letters
with his name and surname: Félix Saint-François and puts on the coat he
brought from his father’s house. After meeting his sister again and talking
on how he has done selling at low cost objects (carpets) from his father and telling
how he will spend the money inherited by his sister that she has given to
him, he lays in bed and starts weeping in silence. Meira on her side takes
pills in the bathroom and shows her baby the painted drawing of a cat that
Félix left her– le chat marin à Venise-. Her husband knocks at the
door and asks her to come out –I hate you when you block
yourself as this. Come! It's Sabbath-.
In the following scene, when Meira strolls with the cradle car along
the snowed park’s path, she looks at Félix who is sat on a bench with sad
grimace. Then she turns aside the path and enters into the snowy mantle
leaving the car cradle behind and hides under a tree trunk, further
following Félix when starts walking down the street until she gets into an
alley where she takes the baby in her arms while she parks there the car cradle. Ready?-she asks the girl, and walks
with her on arms up to Félix house’s door that she opens and further leads
her to take a blue drawing that remained stuck on the entrance wall after
Félix pulled away the former one. –Have you watch all the colors?- asks to
her baby in arms, reflecting afterwards –This isn’t right. Let’s return it-.
When she enters the house again and sticks the drawing on its place, Félix is
sat on the staircase, apparently waiting for her: -Strange day, pretty sad… Me,
I like sad days-. –It’s not a sad day- replies Meira –You are sad. You asked
me about death the other day… Do you need help?. Félix stands up and answers:
–No, it´s OK. It’s all right. You? You need help?-. Meira smiles and Félix further
inquires –You´re strange, you’re weird-. –I’m not strange. You are-. -You
are- holds on Félix. –You are more strange than me- affirms Meira. -All
right, all right, I’m strange. So, what’s your name?- -Je m'appel Meira- -Enchanté
Meira-. After continuing speaking about how they both like Félix drawings, she
announces that she is leaving while he offers her to come back whenever she
would wish to do it so.
In a scene where Meira departs with other women the selection of
children clothing, she denies to her friend the will of having anyanother
child. –You can't say that. You need to have more. It’s our
duty (It’s a mitzvah)-. –Did you talk about this with the rabbi?- Since Meira
denies it, the friend continues –Answer me. ¿What story is this? ¿Where are
you going to arrive with this mystery? Think about it. Take care about what
you wish-. Meira keeps silence while her friend Suri takes her by her hands:
-What would you do without us?-. In the subsequent frame showing both spouses
in their respective beds, Meira’s husbands asks her why she had more trust in
Suri that in himself, her companion, her husband; a fact about she knew he
would finally get to know. –What do you want? What are you waiting from me? I
make my work and in the best way I can. Do you think that’s easy for me
having to justify your behavior?-. And on Elisheva, think on the shame she
would have if you continue in such direction… Is that what you really wish?
Destroy our lives, yours, mine... that’s of our daughter. Silent until now,
Meira responds- You know well I don’t want to destroy anybody’s life-. –When
are you going to understand that finally is our life?- asks he, leading Meira
to turn in her bed under complete silence.
The next day shows Meira preparing a mouse trap and taking clothes
from the washing machine, unexpectedly ties her headscarf with a very tight knot
that afterwards she tries to untie. Subsequently she gets alone to Félix’s
door, that he further opens and invites her to get in after she presents him
with a bakery cake and asks him if it would be possible to listen to music. At
this moment he starts talking about the hate to death his father had felt on
him, what makes Meira to reply –I am sure he didn’t hate you at all-. A
dialogue about living alone (Félix)/ surrounded by 6-14 children (Meira)
leads the latter to ask how it would be to be alone. “It’s peaceful but
sometimes it is difficult” explains Félix. In the following interaction he stimulates Meira to use jeans and complains why she doesn't look straight
at him –We are prohibited to look on man’s eyes-. After this
she looks at him and immediately after she locks herself into a room. Here
starts running a white and black video that shows Sister
Rosetta Tharpe Live in Manchester (1964), singing “Didn’t It Rain”. In the
following scene Félix takes Meira into his father’s palace. While he goes to
put on the heating, Meira climbs upstairs and gets into a room with a ping-pong
table where afterwards Félix invites her to play, further chatting with her
on the reasons for design drawing, until Félix’s sister comes in with her
boyfriend and Meira immediately leaves. –What’s wrong with you? Why did you
bring me here?- asks him Meira. –It was my sister. I didn’t know…- answers
Félix. –Are you playing with me?! You lied to me! You said we would be alone!
Why you’re doing this way?! You lied!! -. Thereafter they both reconcile,
head to head. At her return her
husband decides to send her away to his cousin’s house in Brooklyn, without
her girl. While she is lying in the bed with the closed eyes, her arms in a
cross position, he firmly states –I will go to fetch you when I decide it so!
You will have time to think. You’ll see how is like to be separated from your
daughter–. When she argues that that it isn't a matter of discussion as she
would go along with her, he further states –I said she will stay. She hasn't
a passport anyway. Stirring into the drawers he finds the booklet where she
had drew the profile of Félix. -Who is this?!- asks three times with
increasing rage her husband while he tears it apart and throws it to the
floor. Then she takes the girl in arms and locks herself into the bathroom
where she turns out the light and remains in the dark.
Sat at New York’s river coast, she draws
a baby’s profile that’s hold within the frame of an arm. After returning to
her husband’s cousin house, she posts a letter into the mail box; on his side
Félix packs his suitcase before departing to New York, while his sister tells
about a lover their mother had, in the evident aim to compare it with the
decision that Félix is taking with a married woman with children.
Félix and Meira
gather in the New York`s ferry: in silence they smile as they hold their
hands together. After this they go into a hotel with Manhattan skyscraper
views. She tells she’s frightened, changing her
clothes at the toilet, where she puts on her recently bought jeans. – They are a little
tight- she comments, after he stimulates her to walk and show them. Then they
both stroll together into New York city centre, dancing in an Italian pub and
looking lights at Times square. Further in the hotel, she says she would
like such night would never end, although she has to leave. Sat at the
window’s feet looking at Manhattan night, he then tenderly caresses her face
and when holding her head, he takes off her wig and cuddles her own hair with
tenderness, to which she responds entirely.
A similar tender scene
is played by Meira’s husband, caressing his daughter’s hair at the house of
friends taking care of the latter. When they ask him if he has any news from Malka, he denies it and leaves. When
he arrives to his dark, now lonely house he goes into the
kitchen because he listens a noise and opens the closet where he finds a
mouse held in the trap –The world is a cruel place my friend-. In the next
scene is seen when he is travelling in train to New York whether at the time
he arrives to his cousin’s department where Meira is residing, Meira in turn
is leaving for buying a gift to Elisheva. Thence he follows Meira, unnoticed.
And after a few blocks, just around the corner he finds Meira walking aside
Félix, and therefore he stops them by shouting Félix to go with him, while he
attacks him with pushes and punches up to make him fall in the street. At
that moment he climbs upon Félix and hits him further
while he menaces and insults him: - Who
are you?! Sinner! Never more!!! It’s over!-. He then takes Meira by his side
and leaves with her. Next, at Montreal, Félix itself is shown dressed as an
orthodox Jew, bearded and with curled side-whiskers. After leaving the bar
where he once met Meira, he goes into a place where orthodox Jew men dance
together in rounds or in group pairs. Further he tries to get in touch with
Meira that’s within a group of women in a neighboring room, and as he can´t,
he goes straight to her house and knocks the door, but Meira rejects him
–You’re not allowed to come here-,
thereafter staying weeping against the door. On his side, sad at his
home he further removes the attached beard and whiskers.
In the subsequent
scenes Meira’s husband accomplishes together with another fellows a prayer
wrapped in a big mantle (tallit gadol), whereas Meira goes shopping with a
mate to a bookstore and as asked by the latter if she would need something in
there, she finds a post card with a gondola on the Venetian canals with the Rialto Bridge behind. After
this she goes walking by the snowed street and in her way watches to an
apartment where a couple undresses while kissing and embracing together
meanwhile a melancholic song makes reference to a lost love; when she meets
again with her husband, after the morning prayer, she weeps and wonders that
she doesn't know where she actually is and that she doesn't feel the same when
Sabbath comes, so that her husband asks her why she doesn't play dead –Who
says I’m not already dead in this life?-. After this, apparently only worried
for his religious passion he says to a religion mate that he would like to
surmount all his obstacles and find sense for his deep passion. –Both in our
greatness and our smallness there is a difficult path to go in order to
transform the bad into the good. And such difficulties, including the most
terrible, reward even more our commitment-.
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ANALYSIS
This plot shows the convergence of two loners un-adapted to their highly
structured cultural systems ruling their family and personal lives with
excessive rigidity and very poor communication skills which in turn organize
their group members into obedient behaviors if not punished severely and
separated. Under such regimes bereavement and mourning processes are denied unless
playing part of ceremonies that rule such events as social stereotyped
behaviors further blocking real communication amongst the group members. Meira
is a woman with no emotional communication with the highly attached religious
behaviors of her group and husband. She can only communicate well with her baby
to which she draws and plays music; as well she later does with Félix, living
withdrawn from his family and father who he meets again at his terminal stage
of life after a long period of ten years. Under such solitary lives and
deprivation of communication and mutual understanding, they both meet in the
snowy roads of Montreal (Quebec, Canada) and find together to give and receive tender
affection amongst them. Thence, escape to an environment where water
continuously flows instead becoming rigid ice (Venice channels), seems to meet
their fantasy of liberation from isolation into impossible communication and in
some way leading them to find some kind of togetherness, although in the real they
have no place to go nor sustain their lives assuring to protect Meira’s baby
–also deprived since then from any other family or communitarian shelter, to
whom at her final words in the film the latter asks pardon-. On his side, the
religious couple of Meira asks Félix -her new companion- to protect her, as she
is the one he loves most in the world. Also he becomes at last a narrative
mediator of Félix’s father last words to the son, reading in loud voice the
letter that the former had written for the latter and which in turn Félix was
to throw to the garbage. Conversely both members of this disgraceful religious couple
find to reach some sort of mutual comprehension and appreciation at the final
scenes by giving their baby in arms to the other and by permitting oneself to
listen to the music that was prohibited to be listened by the wife, finally resting
alone and with the closed eyes laying on the carpet over the floor. The last
images of the new couple in Venice shows them aside one another but with no
physical contact amongst them, further only showing the boat moved by the
ripples of the channel water with no apparent signs of the couple and baby, leading
to create a sensation that can reframe suicide more than marriage into a new
life as would be transmitted by the phantom
of the opera gondola sailing in the voids of the Paris opera theatre.
Venice in fact can be very easily associated with disguises as well with
melancholic music (“Que C'est Triste Venice”/ “Venise va mourir”) as well to the famous
novel from Thomas Mann La Mort à Venise.
DISCUSSION
The Canadian
film Félix et Meira (2014) as well that the other five previously studied films highlights
denial/ acceptance of bereavement as a central core in the plot of the story
that confront protagonists with anguish of death in an unavoidable very intense
way that challenges their whole previous behaviors and beliefs, which corresponds
in the philosophical context to the symbolization of the demon, as it was described by Stefan Zweig when studying big solitaries’ literary productions as
those from German authors: Kleist – Hölderlin – Nietzsche (Zweig, 1951). The demon would become expression of masked
death instinct (enclosing death perception, death premonition and death
impulses) in the socio-cultural systems involving the personal, inter-personal,
group, social and cultural sub-systems as depicted in
the two religious and non religious groups to which both protagonists belong.
Therefore the analysis of this film supports the notion on which was
constructed the present hypothesis. Both protagonists strive to
save their lives in the search of environmental conditions that would help them
to detach from incomprehension and loneliness in their respective families and
cultural systems and encourage them to find mutual support for togetherness they
need for transforming their lives.
In the realms of philosophy and art, transformation remains a main
transcendent possibility to reach, specially at those times of changing
patterns of live introduced by technology and advances on diverse fields of
knowledge and living standards that alter radically the horizons of persons living
within the terms of life in rigid cultural societies and communities. “Birdman” or “The
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" ?! (2014) opening this cinema
analysis series gives itself testimony of such an aim by keeping alive the
magic of an actor and cinema director beliefs even at times of defeat of his
personal strives to become an independent human being. Realizing his sense of
failure at the art profession, the insecurity stemming from it questions his
ability to face live and human relations, opening an urge for reparation. Willing
to become what he actually is, chased by the guilt commandments of the American
prototype winner that he ought to become in –as perhaps Arthur Miller’s Willy
Loman character in “Death of a Salesman”-, Riggan’s “Birdman” escapes
from reality and finds shelter in fantasy, crossing the line from theatre actor
willing for success at Broadway to return to Hollywood’s comic hero by means of
a suicide attempt that even when it fails warrants to be endlessly reenacted at
last. Hence the film ends with the admired expression of his daughter, keeping
a delusive belief in his father’s quest against loss, as well perhaps hers upon
drugs, in parallel to the denial of the parental psychiatric risk of suicide,
hospitalized for recovery and surgery at a high window location in a New York
clinic. Riggan disease fits into well known Bipolar depression traits, and this
also gives support for the mythic conversion of current men into American
Superheroes -as well that one Ronald Reagan would had dreamt on Michael Jackson
becoming a complete exponent of the American Dream-. The fantastic conversion of reality endangering destruction of men and
their nations into mythic landscapes are basic narrative arguments leading
belief in the power of nature to indorse very difficult human quests against
adversity, both at the individual and collective levels. Such narratives have
guided men trapped into severe disease, family conflict or severe social
situations at war and disaster. Most religions as well political endeavors
emerging at chaotic risk times had find inspiration in such a magic of change.
Even philosophers had become highly worried with such issues defying personal,
social and national values at times when authoritative totalitarian forms of
government clash with extensive social and national survival needs,
transforming them into claims of justice, independence and empowerment –in Argentina
these days times as well in other nations of Latin America, Europe, Middle
East, winds for stability or instability of the ruling governments bring the
need to find security under such reinforcement of ideologies calming down the
loss identity anxieties. “All creative spirit is inevitably brought into a
struggle with its demon, and it's always a passionate fight, heroic, the most
magnificent of all the battles” (Stefan Zweig. 1951). Such battle makes
individuals to “detach hands from their own commandment of will”, turning them
into “weak and hunted, which can’t guide themselves into the tempest inevitably
thrown against the reefs of their destiny” (S. Zweig i.). The unexpected end of
Birdman looks to find redemption from heaven as that one a Superhero would
expect to obtain from his magic skills, defeated from what he would otherwise
deserve from his capacity of developing new insights from the trial of reality
and failure. Under this scope the dialogue amongst the fantastic inner world now
easily achieved with the help of technology and its new possibilities of
development obtained in contact with larger social groups, don’t assure
recognition for the isolated individual nor that one that is to be departed with
his task companions. Transforming into somebody
able to escape from social pressures and find a surviving Self would then run
in parallel to nature, keeping alive the desire of freedom and liberation. As a
winged god in the Assyrian palace walls defying the origin of civilization at
the same place where most cruel hatred and terror seems to threaten the former
by extermination, the artist challenges the big city, pleading for survival
instead of becoming erased from business. By no means Environment -as superior
expression of the Divine- would bolster the destruction of Art or indorse any
ideological replacement by political or religious imposed meanings or
interpretations attempting to submit human lives to rigid conventions. Moreover
it reminds us that under such attack to the core of human nature, environment
and art continue to resist.
The Canadian
film Félix et Meira (2014) as well that the other five previously studied films highlights
denial/ acceptance of bereavement as a central core in the plot of the story
that confront protagonists with anguish of death in an unavoidable very intense
way that challenges their whole previous behaviors and beliefs, which corresponds
in the philosophical context to the symbolization of the demon, as it was described by Stefan Zweig when studying big solitaries’ literary productions as
those from German authors: Kleist – Hölderlin – Nietzsche (Zweig, 1951). The demon would become expression of masked
death instinct (enclosing death perception, death premonition and death
impulses) in the socio-cultural systems involving the personal, inter-personal,
group, social and cultural sub-systems as depicted in
the two religious and non religious groups to which both protagonists belong.
Therefore the analysis of this film supports the notion on which was
constructed the present hypothesis. Both protagonists strive to
save their lives in the search of environmental conditions that would help them
to detach from incomprehension and loneliness in their respective families and
cultural systems and encourage them to find mutual support for togetherness they
need for transforming their lives.
In the realms of philosophy and art, transformation remains a main
transcendent possibility to reach, specially at those times of changing
patterns of live introduced by technology and advances on diverse fields of
knowledge and living standards that alter radically the horizons of persons living
within the terms of life in rigid cultural societies and communities. “Birdman” or “The
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance" ?! (2014) opening this cinema
analysis series gives itself testimony of such an aim by keeping alive the
magic of an actor and cinema director beliefs even at times of defeat of his
personal strives to become an independent human being. Realizing his sense of
failure at the art profession, the insecurity stemming from it questions his
ability to face live and human relations, opening an urge for reparation. Willing
to become what he actually is, chased by the guilt commandments of the American
prototype winner that he ought to become in –as perhaps Arthur Miller’s Willy
Loman character in “Death of a Salesman”-, Riggan’s “Birdman” escapes
from reality and finds shelter in fantasy, crossing the line from theatre actor
willing for success at Broadway to return to Hollywood’s comic hero by means of
a suicide attempt that even when it fails warrants to be endlessly reenacted at
last. Hence the film ends with the admired expression of his daughter, keeping
a delusive belief in his father’s quest against loss, as well perhaps hers upon
drugs, in parallel to the denial of the parental psychiatric risk of suicide,
hospitalized for recovery and surgery at a high window location in a New York
clinic. Riggan disease fits into well known Bipolar depression traits, and this
also gives support for the mythic conversion of current men into American
Superheroes -as well that one Ronald Reagan would had dreamt on Michael Jackson
becoming a complete exponent of the American Dream-. The fantastic conversion of reality endangering destruction of men and
their nations into mythic landscapes are basic narrative arguments leading
belief in the power of nature to indorse very difficult human quests against
adversity, both at the individual and collective levels. Such narratives have
guided men trapped into severe disease, family conflict or severe social
situations at war and disaster. Most religions as well political endeavors
emerging at chaotic risk times had find inspiration in such a magic of change.
Even philosophers had become highly worried with such issues defying personal,
social and national values at times when authoritative totalitarian forms of
government clash with extensive social and national survival needs,
transforming them into claims of justice, independence and empowerment –in Argentina
these days times as well in other nations of Latin America, Europe, Middle
East, winds for stability or instability of the ruling governments bring the
need to find security under such reinforcement of ideologies calming down the
loss identity anxieties. “All creative spirit is inevitably brought into a
struggle with its demon, and it's always a passionate fight, heroic, the most
magnificent of all the battles” (Stefan Zweig. 1951). Such battle makes
individuals to “detach hands from their own commandment of will”, turning them
into “weak and hunted, which can’t guide themselves into the tempest inevitably
thrown against the reefs of their destiny” (S. Zweig i.). The unexpected end of
Birdman looks to find redemption from heaven as that one a Superhero would
expect to obtain from his magic skills, defeated from what he would otherwise
deserve from his capacity of developing new insights from the trial of reality
and failure. Under this scope the dialogue amongst the fantastic inner world now
easily achieved with the help of technology and its new possibilities of
development obtained in contact with larger social groups, don’t assure
recognition for the isolated individual nor that one that is to be departed with
his task companions. Transforming into somebody
able to escape from social pressures and find a surviving Self would then run
in parallel to nature, keeping alive the desire of freedom and liberation. As a
winged god in the Assyrian palace walls defying the origin of civilization at
the same place where most cruel hatred and terror seems to threaten the former
by extermination, the artist challenges the big city, pleading for survival
instead of becoming erased from business. By no means Environment -as superior
expression of the Divine- would bolster the destruction of Art or indorse any
ideological replacement by political or religious imposed meanings or
interpretations attempting to submit human lives to rigid conventions. Moreover
it reminds us that under such attack to the core of human nature, environment
and art continue to resist.
In all these 2014 films what seems at stake
are the survival of the personal self and the group self that struggle with the social self which is
strongly imposed by culture,
both ancient and mythical, or else by the diverse
contemporary social systems existing through time and world regions with a
similar objective attempting to
reproduce and replicate amongst the population groups that they intend to
command and persist, a task now
incredibly facilitated by electronic technology. According to Taylor
(Carnevale and Weinstock, 2011) to be a
person or a self in the ordinary meaning is to exist in a space defined by
distinctions of worth. A self is a being for whom certain questions or
categorical value have arisen and received at least partial answers. Perhaps
these have been given authoritatively by the culture more than they have been
elaborated in the deliberation of the person concerned, but they are his in the
sense that they are incorporated into his self-understanding, in some degree
and fashion. Further present attempts developed in order to control and
rule human population behaviors by machines and diverse technical devices,
would intend to standardize human selves into a social self prototype easy to
divulgate and possible to regulate by the State control systems*. In this sense
might be seen the enhancement
technologies (Elliot, 2011) that
would search for social acceptance of
individuals, based on their need to be accepted in the social groups as pair
fellows if not as winners, not to become
losers. Such a competition on
the self modelling amongst the social narrative and family narrative models (Correa& Hobbs, 2009) might indorse discredit of the
latter in behalf of the enchantment given by the uninterrupted offer of
multiple communication technologies and devices that expand interactive group
communication. Under such dynamics the interpersonal group spaces that are able
to achieve real rational and emotional communication amongst persons and groups
in constant exercise of dialogue, reflection and comprehension, are
circumvented opening the way for becoming subjected to authoritative
communicative standards as those masked under technology. Such channels might
accelerate arrival of messages without having the sufficient time and energy to
decode their meaning and take profit of their help to find real solutions for
both the cultural and environmental problems needing urgent measures to be
implemented in order to correct deviances in the political orders that rule the
lives and futures of nations and individuals. Those currently conduce to closed alleys of false communication efforts
amongst individuals that lead to suicidal
attempts or disappearance, as the ones featured in “Birdman” or in “Sils Maria”; or else to political
murder masked as suicide and inculpation of innocents at the diverse social groups gathering in institutions and communities
(as denounced in “Leviathan”), many times leading
brilliant intelligent individuals to find no possible relief from the
hopelessness and desperation of feeling unavoidably trapped within the
totalitarian cruel social systems that impose extermination to nations and
cultures that divert from their dominion narratives: on the opposite to Félix
and Meira submitted to family and cultural group very rigid patterns, Stefan
Zweig and his couple reached a similar escape to death from German national
socialism when in turn they both had went to live to a rather paradisiacal
environment in Brazil**. Otherwise perverted aims of social narratives pretend
to cast the personal or the group members’ narratives into the viral diffusion
of commercial and politically biased narratives interested in the promotion of
false assumptions or false information implicating some kind of discredit for
the renown competitive leaders (an item that include filmmakers and actors on
films being praised by the critics and public***).
In the contrary to the social format narratives reproducing and
viralizing a stereotyped social self without accomplishing real interpersonal
communication and dialogue through the social webs, the personal and group
narratives develop and grow within family and small group systems that follow the literary matrix of communication skills that can be found at
the core of folk stories or fairy tales (Correa, 1982/ 2000), giving enormous
sustain for mourning work. In a similar fashion as we have proposed for family
storytelling in order to transform the personal and family narratives (Correa, 2006),
trans-cultural group stories would detach from enmeshment to past bonds by
establishing new ones aiming to transform guilt and punishment in the cultural
myths and recreate understanding by opening emotional comprehension about the
loss events that run together with environmental change. Natural group
mythopoiesis that stems from the family model of storytelling to the group has
an important function in shaping the group narrative construction of
bereavement integrated with the lessons of environment.
NOTES
* "Jesus
of Montreal is tortured in Buenos Aires" by Julio Enrique Correa [in “Creación
y proyección de los discursos narratives”, Daniel Altamirano y Esther Smith,
Editores, Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 215-227, 2008] presents an
intertextual and intercultural narrative essay exposed in different
simultaneous or succesive narrative forms which discusses the role of
transposition between literary and film texts connectors through a common
theme: the development will pose a exercise of social and intercultural
dialogic narrative capable communication to integrate and create discourses
that challenge their original sense as distorted by the political,
economic and socio-cultural systems. The plot is composed thence by two
superposed stories describing the scientific aims of a social narrative
researcher in parallel to his own unknown subjection to the sound transmitted
by an Army Intelligence Agency which operates from a neighbor building to his
research office, by a control microchip inserted in his subcutaneous tissue
while he slept in bed in his unlocked apartment under the surveillance of the
military and intelligence agents living in the same building. The microchip has
been formerly assayed in disappeared subjects during the military process and
works by favoring responses to electromagnetic stimuli that compete in
intensity and repetition of hypnotic sub-threshold messages with the own brain
activity. Hence the individual Self is put at test in order to comply with a
‘Social self” instructing in primary needs behaviors as those basic stress responses
described by professor Henry Laborit in
his theory over animal behavior in the
Alain Resnais, Cannes awarded film Mon
oncle d'Amérique (1980).
** Feeling more and more depressed by the
growth of intolerance, authoritarianism, and Nazism, and feeling
hopeless for the future for humanity, Zweig wrote a note about his feelings of
desperation. Then, in February 23, 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in
the city of Petrópolis, holding hands. He had been despairing at the future of
Europe and its culture. "I think it better to conclude in good time and in
erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and
personal freedom the highest good on Earth", he wrote [Wikipedia].
*** Rumors about alleged death of the actor of BIRDMAN flooded the social
networks. Such fortunately untruthful news became viral, but however, unlike
previous deceptions that announced the death of celebrities, this time led the
pranksters fraud to another level by creating a Facebook page that collected more
than 1 million "Likes." "On Thursday, August 27, 2015, at
approximately 11 am PDT, our beloved actor died. Michael Keaton was born on
September 5, 1951 in Coraopolis. We will miss him, but we will never forget.
Please displayed based your sympathy and condolences through comments on this
page. "
REFERENCES:
Carnevale,
F.A. & Weinstock, D.M., “Questions in Contemporary Medicine and the
philosophy of Charles Taylor: An introduction”, J. of Medicine &
Philosophy, 36 (4): 385-393, 2011.
Correa, J.E., “El cuento narrado como
objeto transicional activado”, Terapia Familiar, 9: 147-162, 1982.
Correa,
J.E., “Abandono y protección parental en los cuentos de hadas de Perrault”,
Dinámica, 11, Año 6 (3): 215-232, 2000.
Correa,
J.E., "Communication through stories to promote
differentiation of enmeshed family groups", Human Systems: The
Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management, Volume 17, 67-80,
2006.
Correa, J.E. & Hobbs R.N., “The group
narrative of bereavement. Hypothesis about competition of social narrative and
family narrative models” Human
Systems: The Journal of Systemic Consultation & Management, Vol.20.1: 51-64, 2009.
Elliot,
C., “Enhancement technologies and the Modern Self”, J. of Medicine &
Philosophy, 36 (4): 364-374, 2011.
Zweig, Stefan, “Le combat avec le démon. Kleist – Hölderlin - Nietzsche”, Pierre Belfond, Barcelone: 1983; “Der
Kampfmitdemdämon”,S. Fischer Verlag, Francfort-sur-le-Main (1951).
