Posted in from the viewing room, life, movies, personal growth, psychology, video on August 14, 2007| 3 Comments »
Daniel Gilbert says in his book, Stumbling on Happiness, that research shows us that people regret the things they DON’T do much more than they regret the things that they do.
Do you agree? Do you think you’re more likely to regret what you DON’T do…..maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life?
Posted in from the viewing room, movies, video on August 13, 2007| Leave a Comment »
I used to struggle to get a VHS recorder to record a movie using the timer. Oh, I won’t go into the details. It was just often a pain. When I got a dvd recorder with my new big screen I thought it’d be better. Well it was. But only kind of. Still quite a pain. So I swapped it for a hard disk recorder. Oh joy! It’s so EASY! In fact it’s so easy, there are now lots of movies on there that I haven’t watched yet! But that in its own way can be such a serendipitous delight. Came home from work today and browsed the hard drive. Pressed play when I got to An Ideal Husband. What a treat!
This is such a great movie. It delighted me. I loved the humour, I loved the wit, and I loved the acting. Great cast. I don’t think I’ve seen Minnie Driver do anything better (well, at least as good as her role in Good Will Hunting) Julianne Moore is tremendous in it but Rupert Everett is just the best!
There are so many great lines. Here’s a couple of my favourites
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
**********************************************************************************
To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty
**********************************************************************************
Lord Arthur Goring: I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some advice.
Laura: Oh pray, don’t. One should never give a woman something that she can’t wear in the evening.
This is one of those movies that lifts your heart. You know, sometimes we need a movie like that does that. But more than that this a movie where, due to the brilliance of Oscar Wilde, portrays rich and complex characters. There’s nobody two-dimensional here. Even the characters which seem like caricatures at first meeting are revealed to be much more complex than they first appear. I like that. It reminds me why it’s important not to judge – everyone who rushes to judgement in this story discovers how wrong they’ve been once they see a little more. There is a great little video trailer of the movie here
Posted in from the viewing room, movies on August 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Just watched Snowcake. Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman both acting superbly. She plays a high-functioning autistic adult, Linda, whose daughter has been killed in the car the Alan Rickman character, Alex, was driving. He’s a damaged soul himself having lost his son in a car crash and gone to jail for murdering someone. I won’t tell you the rest of the plot. Get the dvd and watch it.
Here’s what I like about it more than anything else. This is a story about difference. How we are all different, and in the more extreme expressions of our difference other people find us hard to accept. This is a story about acceptance of difference. There are so many unique, non-conforming, not “normal” people in this movie. So many unique and strange characters who manage to fit together……certainly not seemlessly, but well. These are people often connected only through chance happenings, with echoes of their pasts resonating in the present.
Snowflakes are all unique of course. Despite being made of the same stuff, they’re all completely different and that’s in no small part responsible for their beauty.
Here is one of my favourite scenes. The two main characters playing a game of scrabble with the rules having been made up by the autistic Linda. The rules include being able to include made-up words as long as you can demonstrate their use in a sentence. Listen to this dialogue and listen to Linda’s story of “dazlious”
Posted in creativity, from the viewing room, movies, science, video on August 2, 2007| 4 Comments »
The movie {Proof} starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal got me thinking (well, there’s a surprise you might say!) It got me thinking about a number of issues. Here’s a couple of them.
How do you prove anything? The basis of the scientific method is (according to Popper) falsification. He meant that nothing can be proven but testing can reveal a hypothesis to be false – and so science progresses, coming up with more and more robust hypotheses which are harder to disprove. Of course, in mathematics, advances are made by writing “proofs” which are solutions to puzzles or dilemmas I suppose (don’t ask me, I’m not a mathematician!). A key part of this movie is how to show who actually wrote the groundbreaking “proof” – the father (Robert), or the daughter (Catherine)? What’s the solution? Well, can it be shown that the daughter could NOT have written the proof? If that can’t be shown, then her claim to have written it can gain strength.
OK, I know, that all sounds pretty convoluted. Don’t let that put you off. This is an intriguing and engaging movie, and not at all hard work!
So that’s the first theme – how do we know what we know? How can we ever be sure of anything?
The second one is the theme of how our traits, skills, and qualities come from our roots, from our origins. We can see qualities in ourselves that seem inherited and we can see some of our qualities in our children. We don’t start with a blank sheet, but neither do we start with a fully written script. We make our lives our own and each and every one of us is unique and different but there are threads that run through us which trail way, way back into other people’s pasts. Catherine seems destined to carry forward her father’s work having inherited his mathematical genius but she hopes she has not also inherited his madness. When her father dies, her challenge is to become herself in her own right. This reminded me of Kieslowski’s Blue.
In “Blue” Kieslowski considers how loss creates the possibility of new beginnings. The main character, Julie, loses her husband and her daughter in a car crash in the opening scenes of the movie and her way of dealing with her grief is to try to rid herself of all memories and connections with them. She tries to start again. But there’s no such thing as a clean sheet. Deleuze showed that we are in a continuous process of becoming and that in every present there is the past and the future. Interestingly, in “Blue” there is also the question of exactly who created a work. In this case, who composed the great music – Julie, or her husband? How can we know?
{Proof} also made me think about what it’s like for two people to create together and how, when it works well, what is created can NOT be attributed solely to one person. Yes, sure, an individual can sit alone and create, but something different manifests itself when the creative process is shared. I think that’s a good example of why its important to know a person within the contexts and connections of their life.
Here’s a fanvid of {Proof} – clips set to “I think I’m Paranoid”, by Garbage
And here are the last few scenes of Trois Couleurs; Bleu
Posted in from the consulting room, from the music room, from the viewing room, movies on June 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Learning the materia medica of homeopathic remedies teaches us about the kinds of ways different people experience the world and cope with life’s challenges. There are amazing parallels and resonances between these patterns and significant characteristics of the starting materials of the remedies.
Let’s take a look at Lycopodium. This is club moss. A delicate looking type of fern moss which creeps along the forest floor looking pretty insignificant. However, back in the Carboniferous Period this plant was one of the greatest trees in the forest. Imagine what it might be like to have a knowledge of your greatness, your superiority over others trapped inside body and personality which is small, weak and insignificant. This gives you a sense of the essence of the materia medica of Lycopodium.
People who respond well to this remedy are often quite haughty, even contemptuous of those who they consider to be their inferiors. But in the presence of authority they become quite obsequious.
There are some great characters from literature like this. Think of Dickens’ Uriah Heep, or Peake’s Steerpike. Or think of Grima Wormtongue. Here he is ……..
That video clip is wonderful. I’ve always liked that song and the way Anyathe has put together the clips from Lord of the Rings to this soundtrack is just superb. It gives us a more sympathetic understanding of this rather distasteful character.
The person who needs Lycopodium after all is just struggling to survive and get on in life as we all are. There’s a duality at the core of their being. Two understandings of the self, each of which expresses itself in different contexts. The child who needs Lycopodium is often as good as gold at school and a very disturbed, difficult child at home, or vice versa, depending on which authorities they respect. The adult who needs it usually reveals their dual nature when they are in the middle of a hierarchy. They are good employees but bullying bosses.
Posted in from the viewing room, health, movies, narrative on March 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
A Matter of Life and Death was made in 1946. It’s a film by Powell and Pressburger. They tell the story of a pilot, Peter Carter, shot down during the Second World War. But as he falls to Earth, the angel sent to bring his soul to heaven loses him in the fog, and by the time they find him he has fallen in love so he pleads to be allowed to stay alive a while longer. A court case to decide the issue is set up in Heaven. OK, so far, you’re thinking “this is just crazy, isn’t it?” Well, it’s a much more interesting movie than just a fantasy. And here’s what makes it interesting for me – Peter’s new love, June, asks a doctor friend to see him. This doctor, Dr Frank Reeves, is a neurologist and diagnoses that the pilot is suffering from a brain lesion which is affecting his visual pathways and so causing these vivid hallucinations of angels, heaven and a court case. What Dr Reeves very cleverly realises is that Peter’s story of the court case in heaven is so coherent and convincing to him (Peter) that if the case goes against him he will die and if it goes in his favour he will live. He deliberately encourages Peter to develop a positive narrative of how the case may go while persuading a neurosurgical colleague to operate on Peter.
The operation is successful and so, of course, is the court case.
Although this movie was made way back in 1946 it is remarkably perceptive and knowing with regard to the human psyche. It shows the importance of narrative in making sense of our experiences and it shows neatly how two different narratives (the medical/neurosurgical one and the patient’s one) can intertwine, indeed, MUST intertwine to produce a successful result of a treatment. The key scene is just over an hour into the movie where Dr Reeves is explaining his diagnosis and the importance of Peter’s narrative. I especially smiled at this comment by Frank Reeves –
A weak mind isn’t strong enough to hurt itself. Stupidity has saved many a man from going mad.
This is part of his argument that this “delusion” of Peter’s is not madness but is a physical problem of the brain. He argues that the delusion has its own internal logic and that Peter has an exceptionally good imagination. This is an interesting early exploration of the relationship between psychiatric illnesses and organic brain disease. But mostly it is an interesting exploration of the importance of the patient’s narrative, not only as a key method of diagnosis (a skill I fear is being lost in Medicine today) but also as a determining factor in healing, even in tipping the balance between life and death. More than this, it makes me think about the age belief – that there is a fine line between genius and madness. However, there is no known link between IQ (one measure of “strength” of mind) and the chances of having a mental illness. But is this what Frank means by “strong” or “weak”? What IS a “strong” mind? Frank says nothing about Peter’s intelligence, what he emphasises are Peter’s imagination and his ability to be logical. Here is what he really means – a “strong” mind has at least two strong capabilities – imagination and logic. Aren’t these key tools in the creation of narratives? Aren’t the most compelling narratives the ones which have been well imagined and seem to the reader to make sense (within their own terms)?
So, what of this apparent danger in a “strong” mind? If we think of this the same way as Frank we can see that if the narrative we tell ourselves becomes dislocated from external reality but is a STRONG narrative then it becomes harmful. This is the way I understand psychosis – a psychotic state is one where the person’s beliefs, their narrative of self, is not well connected to external reality and so becomes a hindrance rather than a help in living.
What’s the lesson here? It’s good to develop a strong narrative ability (it is this, at least partially, which saves Peter’s life – OK, I know, some will argue it’s the surgeon’s skill which does it, but time and time again recovery depends on individual patient’s mental state even when the same pathology is excised by the same surgeon). The danger lies in creating stories which don’t make sense of external reality when the storyteller fails to realise that. We can protect ourselves from that by sharing our narratives to co-create with others the narratives that make sense of all our lives.
What a great movie! I haven’t even touched on the technique of this film, the use of colour and black and white, the special effects, the framing, lighting, scene setting. I should also warn you that if you are of a sensitive disposition (like me) you’ll be in tears in the first ten minutes of this movie (I was!!)
Heroes Not Zombies 