Click here to read: “Two significant works: Fritz Lang’s House by the River (1950) and Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949)” by Kevin Kearney from the World Socialist Web Site on May 22, 2012.

Click Here to Read: The Story of Melancholia  by Åsa Jansson on the History of Emotions website on The Story of Melancholia on November 28, 2011.

Bully is a very popular highly rated documentary playing in first run theatres around the country now.

25 years ago a documentary of this type would have been shown to select parent teacher groups or other education/school groups, and it would have been shocking. It would not have been shown in movie theaters along with the movie fare of the day because it wouldn’t have been considered marketable.

But right now bullying, although of course, not new, has become the popular offender that needs our attention and determination to erase it from the social life of schools.

That’s a good thing of course. Identifying the problem is a first step in making changes. But the problem is highly complex and so are the solutions if there are any, and the message of this film is to build advocacy to eliminate bullying.

It is somewhat like a Gay Pride film, or Black is Beautiful, or Germany making anti semitism illegal.

These are important aids to huge problems..and of course we should have all these forces at work..but the problems will still exist.

I saw this film at a 5 pm, a time when the movie theaters don’t have huge crowds. The theatre was packed with high school kids, mostly black kids. I thought it was a class but there were no teachers or leaders so I don’t ‘know.

They were eating pizza, popcorn, candy, and I thought that this was going to be a noisy audience that would ruin the film for me, but it proved to be a very attentive and quiet audience. At the end, these kids all applauded the movie and I was very moved by the appreciative audience.

The film highlights 5 families who have had a child abused by bullying. In two of the families the sons killed themselves, which the parents attribute to bullying. The camera names the town, all small towns, most in the South, and shows some of the physical setup of the town or countryside. Pictures of the school are shown, hallways, school buses, janitors cleaning, children walking the halls, on the playground.

The parents talk about the experiences of their child, and some of the children speak.

Despite the bland scenes of a school or bus or janitor, the narrations of the film are very moving. This builds up to a crescendo at the end when grief stricken parents address large groups of parents about bullying, their losses, and speak emotionally of their commitments to ending bullying. Balloons and T-shirts with mottos to stand up for people,to not allow bullying rally up larger crowds, and a feeling of unity in addressing a societal illness is ignited.

If there is a bad guy in this movie, it is the administration who is portrayed in interviews as avoiding the discussion, and doing nothing..or negating the charge of bullying with statements such as boys will be boys, they have to work it out themselves and I have ridden that bus and the kids are as good as gold ( from a teacher listening to a mother say her child won’t go to school because of fear of riding the bus)

But is is not really a movie about blame. Its a movie that says together we can make an army and lick this problem. together we can get rid of bullying by not tolerating it. There is merit to this and it is a help, but of course only a partial help to the complex problems of angry and unhappy children acting out, and adult acceptance of conditions, the tough journey to adulthood, and myriads of other problems. The vowed commitment doesn’t even start to explore the characteristics of bullying…victims and aggressors. There is no path suggested for learning, observing..just to disallow it.

Almost no attention is paid to very early childhood, home situations and other breeding grounds of bullying and tying the past or indeed the present home to what is going on at school.

There are two small instances of making a connection.

One of the most appealing youngsters serving as narrator of his life is Alex. Alex is a slight boy with perhaps a delicate…or a studious look about him. A jock he is not He doesn’t have a movie star face. He is full lipped, with prominent teeth, and he came across to me as the most lovable child. He says his tormentors call him fish face, and he feels very bad about this. He is very articulate, introduces you to his family and tells what happens on the bus and in school. At one point, the mother happens to say that he was born at 26 weeks, and a picture is shown of a tiny preemie monitored with tubes to keep him alive. Maybe it was actually a picture of Alex. We don’t know. She says she was told that he wouldn’t live very long, but of course he did, and she regards him as her miracle baby. And that is all that is said of his early life.

Another father who talks throughout the film eloquently of his son who killed himself says that his son was a cheery talkative youngster, and then he said something happened. He became very quiet..something was different and that was the end of that reverie. He explored it no more. So it is not a movie in depth but it serves its purpose very well, in organizing feeling and anger and energy to “fight” bullying. It is something like “fighting drugs”, used by politicians as a promise of what they will do. I could never understand that expression, but I am certainly aware of the destructiveness of drugs.

There is a high school girl who is lesbian and besides being bullied was refused admittance to various places. Luckily this child seemed to have a supportive family but classmates were not.

Another mother talks of the horror of the morning her family woke up to walk past the open bedroom door and open closet door where they saw their young son/brother hanging. She talks from the closet where she shows they removed the shelf. But her narration is of this terrible morning and their grief..and not of the dead boy. It seems accepted that bullying led him to this. Maybe it did, but she makes no mention of the fragility he may have been suffering.

Another highlighted child is a girl who is in jail because she pointed a loaded gun at her aggressor on the school bus. The gun was taken from her, and luckily no shots were fired, but this child is in jail with enough charges, an officer tells us to keep her in jail for most of her adult life.

In one scene a teacher is asking a boy why he hit another on the bus. the child says easily and in a matter of fact fashion…he made me mad so I just let him have it. He certainly seemed to have no anxiety telling the teacher nor did he seem to have any need of trying to deny it or distort it. Kids get mad…even the ones who are bullied get mad…but there is no discussion about the problems of anger, or hero worship of the strong & powerful..or fear of the victim and onlookers and other considerations that need to part of the observation when trying to make resolutions of bullying problems..

It seems to me materials that show what has happened in such programs as Stuart Twemlow’s work in Jamaica and Mark Smaller’s work in Chicago and also many other communities that have analytically oriented programs should be reading material for school administrators who are pictured here as not having a clue.

The adolescent audience seemed to leave the theatre energized and laughing and relieved. I left a little depressed. All the energy this movie is trying to encapsulate is a necessary and good thing, but some of the work done in psychoanalysis would be so beneficial and also have some good practical advice. The need is so enormous and psychoanalytic insight into these problems could be life saving…and possibly help change the helplessness that is felt.

I would like to see a movie of this caliber made of the community experiences of some of our psychoanalytic programs. I believe that would be inspiring.

Selma Duckler

Jeff Who Lives at Home is a film with a theme of loss that is advertised as a comedy, criticized as being contrived, and given consistent high ratings because it was seen as inspiring.

Jeff is a conflicted 30 year old man who belies his anxieties with a laid back manner, his bulky body in loose athletic clothing, his face, still so boy like that one easily dismisses the intense absorbed look that makes Jeff seem not quite connected with the real world. He has a soft appearance that is likable, but lacks any suggestion of strength…despite a big muscular body.

He lives at home with his mother and is intensely occupied with finding his destiny.He is a reflective man, and tells us at the opening of the film, I can’t help but wonder about my destiny, my fate.
In the opening scene, jeff is standing
with his back to a blaring rv commercial on vitamins. and he is delivering a review on a movie called Signs that impressed him Signs is about aliens, but it is the title that intrigues him. Signs are what he needs to look for to find his destiny.
The phone rings and jars him out of his reverie ..he stumbles to answer it. Kevin? a male voice asks
No there is no Kevin here.
A little bumbling exchange…the caller realizes he has the wrong number ….but Jeff’s view is different. This is destiny calling… the caller asked for Kevin. Jeff has stated that he believes there is a reason for everything. The reason this phone rang is that a message has been give to Jeff that finding kevin will lead him to his destiny. The phone rings again. This must be the validation of that. He rushes to answer it.

He picks up the phone but remains silent in breathless anticipation. All is silent.

Then the woman on the other end of the connection says Jeff when you answer the phone you are supposed to say hello. She is irritated.
Mom, he says, surprised to hear her voice.

She wants to know what he is doing…and has he gone to get the wood glue to fix the broken shutter in the kitchen. She left him a note on the kitchen counter to do this task.
Jeff has not been up in the kitchen, doesn’t know what she is talking about. She is irritated with him. She tells him that if she comes home and finds the broken shuttered not fixed, he can find another place to live

But I’m in the middle of something he says to his mother.
They hang up…he goes to the kitchen, sees the note, looks at the broken shutter, and mournfully sets out for the bus stop to go to a store and get wood glue.

Now we leave our hero. The camera moves to .a rectangular,ugly brick apartment building with little windows in a commercial neighborhood, and goes into one of the apartments where a young wife is sitting at a breakfast table while her husband spoons strawberries and whipped cream onto a waffle for her pleasure….but she is decidedly not having pleasure from this attention…she looks at him with a look that tells us she is tired of his failure to know what pleases. He sits back, quite satisfied with his husbandly loving attention and starts to tell her of a beautiful Porsche he has been admiring. She doesn’t want to hear this, cuts him short to say we can’t afford it…in a tone that lets us know she can barely tolerate his insensitivity anymore.
He smiles broadly, trying to check his enthusiasm of the surprise he is about to reveal. He pulls car keys out of his pocket and dangles them and smiles at her as he tells her, I bought it. She is angry. He tells her she doesn’t have vision…which he definitely has. She says where is the car? Parked on the lot right under our window. She goes to the window . where she sees the gleaming white Porsche…she takes the waffle whipped cream, strawberries, opens the window and dumps them on the car…throws in a handy bottle of catsup for good measure.This mans name is Pat and his wife is Linda. He is Jeff’s older brother.

Jeff & Pats mother, Sharon, works in a tiny cubicle in a fairly large office.We never learn what is done in this office, but it all seems to be routine office work…and not creative or stimulating. she is a big eyed, tall bosomy woman,middle aged but still beautiful, very lonely, and disappointed in her sons. She has one friend, Carol.As she sadly looks on her life, we learn that her husband Tom died, and she is having trouble adjusting to life as a widow. She has a faint hope of finding another man.
Now we have the cast of characters… the mother.her husband, prematurely dead ….2 brothers…one looking for his destiny, and the other….loving the wife he thinks she is, and entirely blind to the one she really is …..all of them
coping with the loss of the father…Sharon looking for replacement love,Pat trying to make more secure his relationship with his wife which he correctly senses is fragile, and Jeff, unable to leave home, and desperately trying to replace the voice of the father for its guidance and wisdom. In the format of a contrived comedy, the film shows these struggles.

As Sharon reflects sadly on her life, a piece of paper folded like a child’s paper airplane floats down on her desk. Unfolded it reveals a drawing of a full blown beautiful flower. Shortly after a note appears on her computer screen saying the sender is an admirer. A dialogue develops. Sharon writes that it can’t be she that is admired as she is old and her body is getting lumpy. The sender disagrees.
Sharon asks how did you get my screen name? the sender says I work here. Sharon looks around the cubicles, sees a few men standing, and decides it is not them.
In a playful mood now, she suggests he go to the water cooler and meet her. She goes to the water cooler , but first she unbuttons the top button of her blouse, shoves her breasts up a bit, shakes back her hair (Saradon is a wonderful actress…there is no question in this pantomime of excitement and anticipation of sex again in her life) She waits at the water cooler, and soon a very dull looking, paunchy slow man comes up and takes a drink. She is animated, says hello. Hello, he says. She rushes on…that she loves flowers, and some other conversation about the meaning of flowers, and the surprise of the drawing. He looks at her flabbergasted, and says, I have no idea what you are talking about.

She runs away into a storage room, and cries. Minutes later, her friend carol comes into comfort her. As Carol puts her arm around her , and the long sleeve of her dress falls away where a tattoo of the identical flower from the paper plane is seen. Sharon looks at Carol with understanding, and with such a face of disappointment and anger that language is not needed
Carol says, look its not what you think it is.
Oh, yes, it is, Sharon states bitterly and leaves slamming the door.
Back on the bus, Jeff is so dreamy and lost in his thoughts, one can see wood glue has disappeared from his mind. He is startled out of this reverie however, as a young black athlete gets on the bus, wearing jeans and a tank style jersey that announces on the back, Kevin.
Jeff reads the shirt, and starts to focus and become alive when the boy pulls the cord and gets off the bus.
As the bus starts up again, Jeff decides he has received the sign initiated by the earlier phone call, yells at the bus driver to stop, jumps off the bus and starts in pursuit of the Kevin boy.
Kevin has disappeared into a convenience store to buy a drink. In goes Jeff, hiding from him from aisle to aisle while the Asian shopkeeper tries to understand what Jeff is looking for. His queries are greeted with a Shush which the the clerk doesn’t understand. Jeff bolts out the door as Kevin leaves and follows him to a playground where a group of muscular young men are playing basketball. Jeff sits at the side of the playing field to watch…a chunky white boy admiringly watching the muscular black athletes playing a vigorous game…so energetic indeed, that one of the players gets injured in a collision and has to be carried off the field. However this game is too vibrant to stop for that, so they push Jeff onto the field and he plays to help his new team to victory.
Kevin is all smiles….wants to know why Jeff is following him. He was very aware of this pursuit, and in a friendly manner says, I’m gonna put somethin in the air..wanna come? Jeff says I don’t know what you mean. Weed, man; I’m gonna smoke me some weed.
Jeff’s face lights up in a way we have not seen till now…and he happily ambles after Kevin, much in the manner of an enthusiastic puppy following his master who has a plate of meat scraps. As he blissfully lights up, the joy is extinguished because he is knocked out, beaten up..and when he comes to focus again he dejectedly starts to walk down the street.
Approaching a Hooters restaurant, he sees his brother, Pat,comes out of the restaurant apparently going towards a white Porsche. The brothers greet and Pat offers to drive his brother home. Along the way they pass the graveyard where their father is buried, and stop at his grave.
Jeff says I had a dream about Dad. He is asking me what is……stop, says Pat. I have the same dream and together they discuss the dream they share of their father asking his favorite question…what is the greatest day in the world. The boys don’t know the answer so he gives it. The greatest day in the history of the world is TODAY. And that becomes the 2nd theme of the movie…which is an account of just one day. Find what you need in what is offered TODAY. Actually not a bad message. The past and the future are not ours to use , but today is happening as we breathe and is our resource.
They get back in the car, and showing off the amazing Porsche, Pat loses control, and they crazily spin off the street, into someones yard and smash into a tree, and the Porsche is heavily damaged. This is the beginning of the comedic part of the movie, although the audience has been laughing all the way along (just not me)
Pat gives the angry homeowners a big sum of money not to call the police and they start again, but this time Pat spots his wife’s car in front of a restaurant, and she is seen through the window, evidently enjoying a conversation with a man with whom she appears to be having lunch. Pat becomes angry, frightened he will lose his wife, and needs to know more about this mystery. He sends the Kmart clad,bruised Jeff into the classy restaurant with orders to sit in the next booth and put the cell phone in a position to pick up the conversation. Jeff accomplishes this after offering the waitress money to overcome her reluctance to seat him at all.
As this goes on, a tow truck is lifting away the Porsche which is illegally parked. Pat sees it too late, and runs down the street after the tow truck, and ultimately Jeff comes out of the restaurant and starts running after Pat.After retrieving the car, Jeff spots yet another Kevin. It is a candy company named Kevin’s . the driver is unloading candy for candy machines wearing the logo Kevin on his cap. Naturally Jeff has to follow him. This candy is being delivered to a Hampton Inn and in the parking lot is Linda’s (Pats wife)car so he knows she is there with the man from lunch. After much hassle with the clerk they find the room and Pat decides his hulk of a brother can knock the door down. this is about to happen when the man, fully dressed and very mild and gentlemanly comes out to get some ice. Linda,comes out fully clothed also, which helps her statement that they are just having a meeting and she is aghast at seeing them there,
The movie ambles on in this fashion for a time.

Meanwhile Sharon back at the office has accepted that Carol is what life is going to offer her, accepts a kiss from Carol,and has become a laughing young girl at the prospect of a companion…maybe a lover, we don’t know. She confesses she is the mood to do something spontaneous, and she hasn’t been to New Orleans in 20 Years. {this movie takes place in Baton Rouge). So they head off to New Orleans. Linda is also on her way to New Orleans, and following her,some cars behind is Jeff and brother Pat.Pat is determined to get his wife back as she has angrily told him their marriage is over.

The traffic is stopped on a bridge…something has happened and for miles the cars are stopped in a big traffic jam. Overhead a helicopter appears. As Jeff stares at it, he realizes this helicopter is the sign he has been waiting for. He jumps from the car and starts running to the front of the line.
t A car had driven toff the highway into the river below. The car is almost not to be seen anymore, but there are two children in the water, crying. Without a moments hesitation, Jeff jumps into the river and rescues the girls with the help of a tugboat coming to rescue. The girls cry….our Daddy, our Daddy, and Jeff begins the heroic rescue of the drowning father. He saves his life but Jeff is going under.By this time Pat is up above checking out the problem. He sees his brother drowning, and he jumps in and carries him to a waiting boat..
The next scene, is on a coast guard boat with an unconscious Jeff being worked on by the medics…there is suspense and fear that he is lost. But no,he spits out an enormous amount of water, more and more and finally sits up. He is saved, and he has saved the father…the father of the little girls…but his fantasy of saving his father is complete. He met his destiny.

It is night now and it is Sharons birthday. They are in the kitchen and the camera shows us the shutters, all in a row…not a break..it has been fixed. Sharon blows out her candles with an ecstatic smile with Carol at her side,Pat has told Linda he just wants to be in love again with her..thats his only desire and it works, according to their smiles..the little girls on tv praise Jeff for saving their father and the audience applauds warmly.
the movie has been called quirky, poignant,deeper than other comedies, but the a ratings probably came because a marketable comedy addresses the universal themes of loss and childhood fantasies of magic. the same story could have been told in a tragic mode without the car chases and slapstick but it probably wouldn’t have sold as well.. Comedy and tragedy are opposite sides… when this nickel was tossed it came comic side up.
Selma Duckler

Jeff who lives at home
Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass
Jeff- Jason Segel
Pat- Ed Helms
Sharon–Susan Sarandon
Carol- Rae Dawn Chong
Linda-Judy Greer

Click here to read the second of a series of articles on the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival by World Socialist Web Site, “Crulic – The Path to Beyond from Romania: The Tragic fate of a decent, humble human being,” written by Kevin Kearney and posted to the site on May 19, 2012.

I don’t know how many readers of International Psychoanalysis have seen the French Canadian film, Incendies. For those who have not seen it, I must warn you that this article will include important “spoilers,” so reader beware.

It is an award winning film, highly acclaimed, that brings the viewer to the horror and cruelty of war and of ethnic hatred amidst a story of incredible courage with the inevitable accompaniment of intense trauma. But that is not why I particularly bring Incendies to your attention. I thought that it might be of interest to analysts because it bears striking parallels with Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (perhaps more properly Oedipus Tyrannus).

The plot revolves around a young woman, Nawal Marwan, living in Lebanon (although the country is never named in the film or the play from which it was adapted). She has committed the unpardonable sin of taking a Moslem refugee as her lover. He is killed by her brothers as she watches. They are about to execute her as well when her grandmother intervenes. She is exiled in shame from her village, sent to live with an uncle in town; but, when civil war breaks out she returns to the south to find the baby that she bore from that love affair. Through Nawal’s eyes, we see incredible cruelty. She is the only survivor of a bus filled with Moslems heading south, saved by the cross she wears around her neck when Christian militiamen slaughter everyone. She tries to save a little girl, on the bus with her mother, but sees her gunned down as she tries to run back to the burning bus where her mother’s body lies.

Nawal offers her services to the Moslem militia under Chamseddine, and successfully assassinates the head of the militia that had committed the atrocity. She is imprisoned and tortured for 15 years, but maintains her integrity. Years later, living in Canada with her twin children, something precipitates a breakdown, sending her into a catatonic state. In Nawal we see how resiliency can co-exist with breakdown in the same victim of trauma.

In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud likens Oedipus Rex to the work of analysis, as Oedipus pursues the truth about his past. As in analysis, there are two loci of action: the “present,” in which Oedipus slowly uncovers the truth; and the past, which gives meaning and motivation to the present. As in an analysis, the viewer learns about the past only through words, yet much of the action of the story is in that past. The plot is set in motion when Oedipus is told that to lift a plague from the land, he must find the murderer of Laius, the former king and former husband of Oedipus’s wife, Jocasta. It is through his quest for the truth that the entire traumatic story is brought to light.

Incendies also begins with a command to seek the truth about the past. As with Oedipus Rex, that truth has to do with a traumatic family history involving murder, incest and the abandonment of children. It is told from a different perspective, that of Jocasta and her children, and some of the events are displaced, but I think the reader/viewer will recognize the essential plot.

In a scene reminiscent of the opening of another film, The Bridges of Madison County, a son and daughter, in this case twins, are set on a strange quest by their deceased mother, a quest that pushes them to uncover secrets about her, their own origins and their family. After a brief opening scene, whose significance we cannot understand until we are nearly at the end, we find ourselves in the office of a notary, Jean Lebel, who is opening the will of a his former secretary, Nawal Marwan, for her twin son and daughter, Simon and Jeanne.

In the will, after leaving her total possessions to her twin son and daughter, Nawal gives strange burial instructions, that she should be buried “naked, face down” with no casket or stone. “No epitaph for those who don’t keep their promises.” She goes on to assign parallel tasks to each of her children, that each should deliver a sealed letter, Jeanne to her father, whom she must find, Simon to his brother, whom he must find, adding, “When the envelopes have been delivered, you will be given a letter, the silence will be broken, a promise kept, and you can place a stone on my grave and on it engrave my name in the sun.”1   With this we have both a mystery and an apparent paradox. The children understand that their father is dead and have never heard of a brother.  Like Oedipus, they are about to learn some startling truths about their origins and their family history.

Following Freud’s comparison of the action of Sophocles’ play with the work of an analysis, it should come as no surprise to us that Oedipus shows great ambivalence in his pursuit of the truth about his origins. In the twins’ reactions, we see elements of both sides of Oedipus’s ambivalence. Jeanne accepts the task of finding her father and resolving the mystery, pursuing the story at its roots, her  mother’s native land, while Simon is angry and dismissive, calling his mother crazy. His intention is to  ignore the will, bury his mother in a “normal” manner and not buy into her craziness. Oedipus attacks the messenger, Creon, who brings him news from the oracle that he, Oedipus is the murderer they are seeking. Simon is more polite, but somewhat curt and dismissive of the messenger, Lebel.

As analysts, we expect such ambivalence about the secrets of the past, buried in unconsciousness, but reaching out through transferences and other reminders of action and thought that carry an erotic connotation. As viewers, we are moved by curiosity, and less so by fear, for we are removed from ownership of the dynamics that are to be uncovered. Nevertheless, the film will take us into some areas of traumatic witness.

In the scene following the reading of the will, as we gaze upon Jeanne, we hear words obviously intended to put us into her inner world as she faces her new journey, although outwardly spoken by her mentor as he addresses a new class in “pure mathematics.” Fortuitously for us, it also suggests what is faced by someone entering into an analysis.

“Now you are embarking on a new adventure. You will face insoluble problems that will lead to other, equally insoluble problems. Friends will insist that the object of your toil is futile. You’ll have no way of defending yourself   for the problems will be of mind-boggling complexity. Welcome to pure mathematics and the realm of solitude.” (italics mine)

Her mentor, Niv, encourages her on her journey of enlightenment, telling her, “You just learned that a, your father is alive, and b, you have another brother. What’s ridiculous is to challenge the inevitable. You have to know or your mind will never be at peace.” Something similar could have been said to Oedipus, and to many of our patients.

Whereas Sophocles’ play tells us of the past only through words, the way we hear about it in an analysis, Incendies uses the modern vehicle of “flashback” to bring that past to life.

The first two flashbacks are somewhat brief, and like the opening information in an analysis, come to us at a point in the story at which we can’t fully understand them. The first is the opening scene of the film in which we see a group of boys, somewhere in the mid-east, having their heads shaved. The focus is on one particular boy as the camera pans down to his ankles and feet, revealing something that we may not even see at that point because its significance is only revealed later.

The second flashback is to Nawal’s “accident,” as Simon refers to it in talking with his sister. We see it through Jeanne’s mind’s eye. She is at a community swimming pool when she sees her mother sitting on a lounge chair, staring into space. She is unresponsive to her daughter’s pleas for her attention, and we soon see that Nawal has lapsed into a catatonic state.

It is presumably through the mind of Nawal, lying in bed in that catatonic state, that we see the drama of the past. That drama takes place in her native country, given no recognizable name in the film, but clearly Lebanon. We witness Nawal experiencing horrific trauma in the days of the civil war in Lebanon.

As we follow that story with Oedipus in mind, we will see that the elements of the story have been jumbled. We are following the story from the point of view of Jocasta, Nawal, and her children. Like Jocasta, Nawal experiences the death of her first lover at the hands of a family member, but in this case at the hands of her brother. Nawal is an adolescent girl in her small village, running off on a secret rendezvous with her young lover, Wahab, the son of a “refugee,” and presumably a Moslem. The couple are ambushed by Nawal’s brothers, who shoot and kill Wahab at point blank range, then are about to shoot Nawal in the back of the head for disgracing the family, when her grandmother intervenes, shooing them off as if they were naughty children.

Like Jocasta, she must have her infant son taken from her, not because he is prophesied to kill his father, but because the love that bore him has already killed his father and because his birth is a scandal to the family. Nawal tells her distraught grandmother that she is pregnant. The grandmother keeps her with her through the pregnancy, but the infant is taken away to be sent to an orphanage. This part of the Oedipal tale will be repeated in a different form later in the film.

As with Oedipus, in the process of sending him from his home, the baby’s identity is marked by something done to his ankle. The name, Oedipus, we are told, means “clubfoot” or “swollen foot,” the effect of having the baby’s ankles pinned together. Nawal’s baby’s feet are not mutilated, but the grandmother makes a mark of three vertical dots on the back of one ankle, we realize later for identification. Nawal says goodbye to her baby boy, promising that she will find him one day. As in the Oedipus story, the action begins with a baby being sent out into the world without identity except for the markings on his feet.

The story now follows, in parallel process, Nawal’s journey through the treacherous world of the Lebanese civil war and her daughter, Jeanne’s progress attempting to retrace her mother’s steps to find her father and brother. Nawal, as an adolescent and young adult, gets caught up in the civil war. As war is breaking out, she decides that she must attempt to find her son. She attempts to trace him to the orphanage to which he was taken, to find that it was being evacuated and that the boys had been moved to another orphanage further south. She makes her way  through the war zone, is nearly killed and watches the murder, by a Christian militia, of a busload of innocent  Moslems, including a mother and young daughter.

Embittered, Nawal offers her services to the Moslems, under Chamseddine and succeeds  in assassinating the leader of the Christian militia that had killed the people on the bus. In prison, she endures torture and deprivation, winning widespread admiration of those in the prison as “the woman who sings” for her continual singing which she uses to drown out the sound of other prisoners being tortured.

Her daughter, Jeanne, has difficulty finding anyone who knew her mother at the university where she had studied. She goes to her mother’s village to find that she is not wanted there because of the scandal that her mother had created with her illicit love affair. Jeanne perseveres, nonetheless, and is eventually led to the prison based upon a picture that her mother had left behind. She finds someone who knew her mother in the prison and learns the story of “the woman who sings” and of Abu Tarek, the torturer who raped her and impregnated her in the prison.

Now, Jeanne believes she has drawn closer to finding the missing brother. At this point she is joined by her twin, Simon. He still has no desire to pursue the mystery, but goes with the notary, Lebel, in order to retrieve his sister. At this point, the chorus takes a part, in the form of the brotherhood of notaries. Lebel has contacted a fellow notary in Lebanon, who has perused records and found the nurse who midwifed Nawal’s baby in prison.

By the time  they track down the elderly nurse in a hospital bed, we, the viewers know what they will find. It is a  story  that once again parallels the story of the baby, Oedipus, being handed over to a servant to be taken into the wildnerness to be left for dead. The plan for the offspring of Nawal’s rape is similar, drowning in the river. But as in the Oedipus story, the bearer, in this case the nurse, cannot commit the deed.

In a dramatic scene with the twins and Lebel and an interpreter standing around the bed, the nurse is told that these are the children of “the woman who sings.” She becomes tearful and ecstatic and greets them warmly as they learn that they were the children born to Nawal in prison. Like the servant who bore Oedipus, she has saved the children, but in this case, she was able to return them to the mother when she was released from prison. In the two births, Nawal’s children recapitulate Oedipus’s experience, one boy being sent away from his mother, but not to his death, and the later twins being taken from her to be killed, but spared.

It has often been pointed out that in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus has enough information to figure out what happened. He has only to put the various pieces together, but he resists the unwanted truth. Here, too, the twins should have been able to make the simple calculations about time and age to realize that they were the babies born in prison. We suspect that they get lost in the story as it unfolds and do not want to believe that they were born out of torture and rape and that their father is the notorious torturer, Abu Tarek.

But the brother is still to be found. The notaries uncover records that begin to point them towards the brother. He was sent off to an orphanage. The orphanage birth records lead them to an orphan born in May, 1971, who was given the name Nihad de Mai. Here the official record breaks off. The notary suggests that to find out about Nihad, they must get in touch with the Moslem militia leader from that time, Chamseddine.

Now, it is Simon who must pursue the trail. He has learned about his mother’s traumatic and heroic past. Together with a guide, he goes to the south to seek Chamseddine and is finally taken to him with great drama and secrecy as Chamseddine is still in hiding.

Now the film once again gives us parallel images. We see Simon walking from one car to another in the desert, but the scene subtly shifts and we see Nawal entering into a car to meet with Chamseddine, who tells her that she will be helped to emigrate with her twin babies. He is here a fatherly figure.

We shift back to Simon’s meeting with Chamseddine, in a private room, surrounded by body guards. He tells Chamseddine that he is seeking Nihad of May and that the birth records from the orphanage have shown that Nihad of May is his brother. Chamseddine empties the room of all but one other man and speaks directly to Simon, who is permitted to remove the mask from his eyes. He explains that he and his followers had killed the villagers where the orphanage stood out of revenge for the killing of refugees by the Christian militia. They had saved the children, however, and had raised them to fight alongside them. Nihad was with them.

“Nihad had a gift. He was special. He quickly became a formidable marksman. But he wanted to find his mother. He searched for months. I don’t know what he saw or heard. He became crazed with war. He came back to see me. He wanted to be a martyr. His mother would see his photo on every wall in the country. But I refused. He went back to Daresh. He became the most dangerous sniper in the region. A real machine. He would shoot at anyone. And then there was the enemy invasion. And one morning, they captured Nihad. He’d killed seven soldiers. They didn’t kill him. They trained him and sent him to Kfar Ryat prison.”

Simon asks, “He was in prison?”

“Yes. As a torturer.”

“With my father?”

“No. He didn’t work with About Tarek, your father.”

The scene shifts to a hotel room. Jeanne enters the room to join her distressed brother.

Simon: “One plus one makes two.”

Jeanne: “What?”

Simon: One plus one makes two, it can’t make one.

She feels his face, says he is feverish, but when he asks her, “One plus one, can it make one?” she thinks for moment and with a huge gasp, a look of shock comes across her face.

We are taken back to the scene at the swimming pool. Now, we see it through Nawal’s eyes. She is swimming and sees the back of a man’s leg standing by the pool. He has the three vertical marks on his ankle, the marks implanted at birth, the marks that meant nothing to us in the opening scene on the ankle of a boy whose head was being shaved. She approaches him, can say nothing and settles in on the chaise, going into a dissociative state.

Now, we hear the voice of Chamseddine like the Greek chorus:

“When he became a torturer, your brother changed his name. He became Abou Tarek. Nihad of May is Abou Tarek. We know he’s living in Canada under a new identity, Nihad Harmanni.” As in the Oedipal tale, mother and son are reunited in sexual union, in this case in the form of rape.

Now the drama draws to a close. We see the twins approaching their father/brother and handing him a manila envelope. In it he finds the two letters from the will. He reads the first, “Letter to the Father.” It is in Nawal’s words and we hear it in her voice.

“I’m shaking as I write. I recognized you. You didn’t recognize me. It’s magnificent, a miracle. I am your number 72. Our children will deliver this. You won’t recognize them for they are beautiful, but they know who you are.”

Nihad dashes out the door, but they are gone.

The letter goes on, “Through them, I want to tell you that you are still alive. Soon you’ll turn silent. I know. For all are silent before the truth. Signed, Whore 72.”

The second letter, written to the brother, says, “I speak to the son, not to the torturer. Whatever happens, I’ll always love you. I promised you that when you were born, my son. Whatever happens, I’ll always love you. I looked for you all my life. I found you. You couldn’t recognize me. You’ve a tattoo on your right heel. I saw it. I recognized you. You are beautiful. I wrap you in tenderness, my love. Take solace, for nothing means more than being together. You were born of love. So your brother and sister were born of love, too. Nothing means more than being together. Your mother, Nawal Marwan. Prisoner Number 72.”

This Oedipus learns the truth from the posthumous words of his Jocasta.

Now, Lebel reads to the twins, “When the envelopes have been delivered, you will be given a letter, the silence will be broken, a promise kept, and you can place a stone on my grave, and on it engrave my name in the sun.”  He hands them her letter. Simon opens it and they read together as we hear it in their mother’s words and voice.

“My loves, where does your story begin? At your birth? If so, it begins in horror. At the birth of your father? Then it begins in a great love story. But I say your story begins with a promise to break the chain of anger. Thanks to you today I have finally kept it. The chain is broken. Finally I can take the time to cradle you, to gently sing a lullaby to console you. Nothing means more than being together. I love you. Your mother. Nawal”

The film ends with a lone man, Nihad, standing at his mother’s grave.

The story parallels the Oedipal tale in many ways, but it reverses it in one way that is crucial from the analytic point of view. For Oedipus, the uncovering of the truth is itself traumatic. Jocasta kills herself and Oedipus blinds himself and then goes into exile, a tragic figure. This is hardly a good analytic outcome. In Incendies, the trauma is in the past and uncovering it helps to relieve the mother, posthumously, of her burden of guilt over promises unkept. It helps the twins to understand their mother and to recognize her traumatic past and her courage in coping with it. It offers the lonely Oedipus some measure of forgiveness and reunion with the mother he never knew as a mother. Here we have a sibling of Oedipus Rex in which uncovering the truth is healing.

Originally published in the PANY Bulletin Spring, 2012.

Click Here to Read: Bernardo Bertolucci & Andrea Sabbadini An Additional Lens, Bernardo Bertolucci in conversation with Andrea Sabbadini  May 1997 on the Brittish Psychoanalytical Society website.

Click Here to Read:  Four Characters in search of an analyst: A Dangerous Method reviewed by Bennett Roth Ph.D.

Click Here to Read:  Other Posts on A Dangerous Method on this website.

Click Here to Read:  Mahler biopic hits right notes By Alan G. Artner in the Chicago  Tribune on April 27, 2012.