domingo, 30 de agosto de 2015

QUESTIONS FOR A NEW FILM DICUSSION: AN HYPOTHESIS (Félix et Meira) by Julio Enrique Correa, M.D.

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 Maríaprotagonists; 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 (FrenchFélix 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 FestivalFelix 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.  
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-.
Félix picks an envelope at his door threshold: it contains the Venice postcard with few words from Meira: -I have reflected a lot and I believe that it has arrived for me the moment to leave-. He immediately goes into the bathtub and shaves; he dresses and finds his father’s letter in an inner coat pocket, which after giving to it a sight he tries to burn at the chimney at the moment when Meira’s husband rings the door, asking him to talk. Félix invites him to go up on stairs and to sit together with him at the table and share a glass of kosher wine that the visitor rejects. –I need you to understand that if Malka leaves me she is leaving the entire community and she probably won’t be able to come back. And my daughter is going to grow without her mother-. After Félix complies to understand, the husband further states –If she does this I need to not let my feelings guide my actions. We aren’t friends but I need to ask you a favor, man to man: if she returns to you I want you take very well care of her and keep your sight sound cause without her my life has no meaning-. When he ends his statement he further points at Félix’s father letter upon the table and asks -My wife wrote that to you?-. As Félix explains that his father died a couple of months ago and that that was a letter he had wrote for him, which although he didn’t read it in turn, he was going to burn it as garbage, the former asks to read it and Félix complies.  –“My son, I’m soon to die and I’m not well in my head. I write you for giving you my excuses before it gets too late. I apologize for having bullied you as having forced you to become a part of the family structure. I regret we had both loose one another. I know you had never felt at ease in our family. You were separated from us and always followed your will. I would had wish to have you closer to me, but I didn't know how to act. I was not up to the task. I ask you forgiveness. Don't ever forget that the blood that runs in your veins is also the blood of my love. Your father, Théodore Saint-François-. After reading, Meira’s husband knocks on Félix’s table and leaves without a single word. Félix remains seated serious and silent, and further serves a glass of wine for himself – an image that replicates the initial scene of the film, when Meira’s husband serves wine into a glass and further pours it, as part of the Jewish rite-.
In a final scene with her husband, Meira calls him for the first time by his name –“Shulem”- and gives the girl in arms to him – She is pretty in your arms… She looks like you-. They both smile each other and when he leaves they both say goodbye each other for the first time, also looking him by the window when he walks in the street. After making her suitcase she picks up Felix’s cat drawing and the little girl Canadian passport. She further stares for a while at the furniture of the girl’s room and that one of the married couple, and leaves. Finally, after the image of the empty corridor Shulem washes his hands in the daily morning prayer, he goes to the living room and plays the music that Meira liked –“When you’re in love you’re happy”-, further he lays on the carpet and stares at the ceiling until he closes his eyes. At Venice, while Félix has in arms Elisheva crying, Meira removes her wig in the hotel suite and puts it on again to go to fetch the baby. While they have supper Meira asks Félix where are them going to, and as he tells to visit a beautiful place, she makes him understand what she is meaning about. –We will find a place-, he replies with serious gesture. They both cross a bridge, Meira walks down a dark hallway of an old building, and finally they are carried with the girl by a singing gondolier threw Venice channels. While they both look at the views in the channel, they don't get in physical contact with only brief glances amongst them, and Meira says few words to her baby in her arms -Sorry darling. Pardon me-, followed by any comments from Félix. The screen fades to black and during the titles the gondola travels in the night, surrounded by the city lights and other boats, with only the gondolier whistle, the gondola seeming to be moved only balanced by the waters with no other sign of living people upon it.

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.

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).


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