“The danger of looking back”, Reflective reviews from Spencer Film Festival and Spencer Art Group
by Hadyen Crong, reviewer for the Spencer Times
You may remember the critical review I wrote in this column two weeks ago about Matt Coyte’s latest film “Boston Bombing” in which he presented the culprit Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ambiguously as both a victim and villain: the foppish boy next door, anti-hero as well as the ugly face of home grown terrorism. Tsarnaev had been coping well with university life in America until he went back to Georgia and revisited many of the deprived and heart-wrenching scenes of his childhood. As Coyte suggests this can have lethal consequences.
This idea was the main theme of last week’s 2013 International Film Conference held in New York which I had the privilege to attend as a reporter for the Premiere Film Magazine. Many notable presenters from around the globe gave their thoughts and views however three presentations certainly stood out from the rest. They were by Paul Green, a spokesman from National Geographic, psychologist Dr Daniel Gilbert who has worked with the Paramount film industry and chief executive of the Rolling Stone magazine, Matt Coyte.
To my surprise, the opening address was given by none other than Matt Coyte himself who gave a speech justifying his difficult presentation of Tsarnaev in his blockbuster “Boston Marathon”. For those who were able to hear Mr Coyte’s full justification for the movie, it seemed to make a great deal of sense. His view was that we must look back at past incidents with a different perspective in order to understand the big picture.
Many of us have never looked back at the Boston Bombing issue as it was either too traumatic or we simply accepted what the media told us. Newspapers and television news all portrayed Coyte as a devil, murderer and ‘monster’. Hence, by depicting Tsarnaev as both a monster and a boy-next door, Coyte challenged our concept of evil. Coyte asked the audience, “What do you expect to see when you see evil?” We all agreed that we wanted to see a callous, sinister, evasive hard-nosed criminal that we could pigeonhole as a terrorist. But as questioned in the film; what if, instead, the boy is quite pleasant and amicable? What if he has manners?
After Mr Coyte’s speech, I felt rather guilty about the critical review I had written a few weeks ago. I have since come to realise that we must search for a greater truth before stereotyping others. By looking back at the issue and perceiving it through a different set of lens, I was enlightened to an alternative view of the Boston Bombing and Tsarnaev.
The other presentation that piqued my interest was by British forensic psychoanalyst Dr Daniel Gilbert who talked about his latest scientific documentary “Paranoid Personality” which was released in partnership with Paramount. Dr Gilbert’s inspiration for this film stemmed from his work with the mentally ill for many years and his increasing worry at the rising incidence of people from what he calls “persecutory anxiety”. He states that this condition arises when people believe that they are constantly at the mercy of hostile forces. As shown in his film, the protagonist named David Kahane experienced difficult circumstances; evaluating every little thing in his life left him with a feeling of helplessness; as a result, looked for blame.
To overcome one’s ill feelings and move on with life, Dr Gilbert emphasised that only by looking back at our past can we gain a sense of control over our reality.
As Dr Gilbert showed in the movie, this particular patient waged a vendetta against Hollywood as he had sent several scripts to Hollywood studios and looking back over his shoulder so many times, sent him into a paranoid rage. He simply could not handle rejection. Consequently, he wrote threatening letters to one of the directors which developed into an unhealthy obsession. He believed that the director was deliberately blackening his name because he couldn’t get anyone to listen to his pitch. He eventually shot a couple of bullets through the studio wall and was arrested. Dr Gilbert encouraged members of the audience to think about whether they, too, had often become obsessive about things that happened in their life, especially when they were rejected – perhaps when they applied for jobs or for promotion. At such times, he said that one is plagued by a complete lack of control and often does regretful things.
In many ways, David Kahane reminded me of a story written by one of my colleagues on Arthur Freeman who threw his three-year-old daughter off the West Gate Bridge following a vicious custody battle with his wife. Psychologist Evatt Hyatt-Williams writes in Cruelty, violence and murder: understanding the criminal mind, that such homicidal people have a delusional state of mind that flicks from depression to paranoia. With depressive anxiety, the main feeling is self-blame. The person asks himself what he has done to bring his troubles upon himself. But an individual can tolerate only a certain amount of blame. If it becomes too intense, the feeling of responsibility that goes with depressive anxiety switches to a paranoid feeling of being ”got at”. Then the person slides into persecutory anxiety. There is an acute feeling that the whole world is against you and one falls into the abyss.
Ultimately, Dr Gilbert stated that his advice was to re-evaluate our past and consider whether our actions were appropriate. As for Mr Kahane, he has been seeing a psychiatrist who helped him to reconcile with his ill feelings towards the Hollywood industry and the director whom Kahane waged vengeance. As a result, Mr Kahane is now mentally healthy and is able to continue his career as a scriptwriter without the hatred and anxiety of his past.
On the other hand, Paul Green who produces short documentaries for National Geographic contradicted Dr Gilbert’s argument by accentuating how for some, the trauma of their past is too painful. His point was that unlike understanding our wrongful actions, things such as the death of a loved one which are not under our control should remain locked away.
Green’s latest docudrama of the Black Saturday fires follows the lives of some of the survivors. Many people, especially children who have experienced natural disasters also register similar split personalities because of their inability to deal with their trauma. For example, the protagonist of the film Matthew, was nine years old spent the traumatic ordeal at his friend’s house during the Black Saturday fires. He was traumatised upon returning to his own burnt house and the realisation of the death of his neighbour and grandparents. Ever since, bright red sunsets, fierce, winds and the mists in the morning trigger memories of the fire and lead to phobic reactions and panic attacks. He has frequent nightmares and at times is unable to breathe. Ultimately, for Matthew, he does not want to remember his traumatic past as looking back only impacts his reality in unpredictable and damaging ways.
I remembered a review I had read a few weeks again relating to Sigmund Freud’s psychological perspective on memory. He explains how it is possible to both remember and forget at the same time. He states that “contrary thoughts are always closely connected with each other and are often paired off in such a way that the one thought is excessively intensely conscious while its counterpart is repressed and unconscious. “The relation between the two thoughts is an effect of the process of repression. According to Freud, traumatic experiences are often repressed in the subconscious but lurk beneath the surface and are often recalled during troublesome times. Accordingly, these experiences will have a big impact upon our realities.
As I was driving home from the conference, I wondered though whether the victims of the Boston Bombing would be able to ever forget their memories or just a flick of the switch and our reality can change. To many of us, the prevalence of psychos and madmen seem a world away. But in actual fact, the delicate balance between sanity and insanity is a precarious one. A simple catalyst – the loss of somebody you love, a natural disaster, witnessing murder – maybe all that it takes to upset the balance and throw our reality into confusion.