Reel Insight

Perhaps it's a sign of our over-scheduled times, but film clubs have supplanted book discussion groups to transform the solitary appreciation of cinematic art into a communal experience. After all, nothing beats a juicy conversation about a provocative movie. One film group takes it a step or two to a deeper level – a kind of group therapy.

Reel Deal, sponsored by the Association of Psychoanalytic Thought, is actually a film series for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts open to the public. The series approaches film not only as art but as a depiction of the human condition – even an educational tool for therapists. The programs offer familiar, but emotionally-charged films.  Participants view extended segments of the film that are pertinent to the psychological theme or plot development, followed by film and psychological analyses.

"We look at films in the deepest way possible from a psychologically-motivated standpoint," explains Dave Lundin, co-coordinator of Reel Deal and a psychotherapist. "For example, what's the psychological core that drives Harry Potter? He's an orphan who lives under a staircase and he feels alone… so he creates this fantasy world to meet these emotional needs that aren't met in his real life."

Last season, Reel Deal analyzed Day Night Day Night, a film study of a suicide bomber.  "There's a point where she's about to blow herself up – (we) stop it at that point before she tries to pull the trigger and look at the symbolism about what's going on around her… It's a street scene with people moving about. But when you stop it, everything points to the catastrophic event that's about to happen. There's an explosion of cotton candy behind her in multi-colors…the expression on people's faces and the colors the director chose to dress her versus people in the crowd. When you stop a still you notice all these things that you're impacted by as the film flies by. You can't take the time to notice. I wonder if film has more power to evoke unconscious material than other mediums because it's dreamlike.

"We could make a huge argument that film is a shared cultural dream that we all experience; it's very close to what goes on unconsciously in a dream with all the hidden meanings, displacement and symbolism that a dream has to disguise the things we're not ready to handle. These are interesting psychological principles about how people deal with their own issues. Hopefully a non-clinician would be intellectually fascinated" in more deeply understanding a film, Lundin says.

Ira Koningsberg, professor emeritus of Film at the University of Michigan and editor of Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, writes that film "is a window to the mind; it is the art form of all the art forms that requires the most mental and perceptual involvement. . … We see the everyday world as a 'movie in the head' made up by a series of static snapshots on which the brain imposes motion."

As such, the cinematic technique becomes a teaching tool for therapists, adds Jolyn Wagner, M.D., a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who co-coordinates Reel Deal. "I like to see what I can learn about psychoanalysis, based on what (techniques) a film uses – montage, editing…" The process that an editor uses in structuring a plot, rearranging details, using special effects is comparable to the work of a psychoanalyst, she says. "Sometimes they do it even better because they're so creative."  Costuming, scene setting, visual perspective, sound – "all of the things we haven't paid a lot of attention to in the work that we do. It lends itself to what goes on in therapy in a rich way."

Lundin notes, "We want to give people who come to the series a deeper understanding of the millions of conscious and unconscious decisions that a director has to make and the impact of those decisions on the viewing experience."

An English major in his undergraduate studies, Lundin says, "like any short story, novel or poem you can unravel the symbolism (in film); you develop a narrative about what must have gone on in this person's life to make them end up where they were. Hopefully, the clinician would get an understanding in general and specifically the psychology of the characters in the film."

He and Dr. Wagner taught a course at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute last spring about how film devices enhance the understanding of psychoanalysis. One of the movies they studied was Battleship Potemkin, in which they examined "how editing affects how the director shapes what the spectator will see based on what he presents. The analyst does the same thing a lot of times," according to Dr. Wagner.

"Viewing a film is an intensely emotional perceptual experience," writes Konigsberg, who has been a Reel Deal commentator. "Isolated from the distractions of normal, every-day life, the viewing experience also encompasses the psychological paraphernalia we use in coping with the world outside the theater. For these reasons, film spectatorship is an ideal context for examining the workings of the mind in general."

Adds Dr. Wagner, "The mind weaves things together; a bunch of stills shown in rapid succession. Our minds try to organize it into a forward movement. People making films exploit that."

The 2008-9 Reel Deal series features three films and a popular television series:

• No Country for Old Men, Oct. 19, 1-3 p.m., Bloomfield Township Library;
• Lars and the Real Girl, Nov. 16, 1-3 p.m. Bloomfield Township Library;
• In the Valley of Elah, Feb. 1,  1-3 p.m. Bloomfield Township Library;
• HBO's In Treatment, March 22, University of Michigan, East Hall, Ann Arbor

There is some concern that knowing too much ruins it," cautions Dr. Wagner.  "But I think that the more you understand about how a film is done the more you get out of the film and the more you enjoy it."

Of course, as Freud might say, sometimes a film is just a film – funny, sad, frightening, beautiful.

Tickets for Reel Deal are $15 for the general public, $5 for APT members and students. For information contact Dave Lundin at 248-229-5389.