Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian

JIMMY P:  PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN      B              
France  (117 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Arnaud Desplechin

This is one of the more puzzling films seen in awhile, where the people involved in the making of the film are highly respected, yet this is not the typically appealing dramatic effort with quirky characters and sweeping conversational dialogue that dominates other Desplechin films, yet the entirety of the film’s narrative feels like one long, prolonged dialogue where there’s a flat, unengaging dramatic feel that is often tedious.  One of the select competition films at Cannes, this is a confounding experience, and a bit peculiar, as you really don’t know if the film is good or bad, but it’s a somewhat troubling experience to follow, where there are really no guidelines, where you’d think this could be an experimental film, but it’s not.  All along it feels underwritten, where secondary characters never materialize into something more, yet this is a film that glorifies the power of conversational dialogue, where words actually mean something, more than in typical movies, yet the viewer is scratching their head trying to comprehend what’s so significant about what we hear.  Based on a true story in the late 40’s, Benicio Del Toro is Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Indian who suffers blackouts, an army corporal who returns from the war with severe, debilitating headaches, where despite a crack in his skull, doctors at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, the army’s leading psychiatric hospital, are at a loss to figure out the source of Picard’s problems, especially after his tests turn up normal, showing nothing is physically wrong with him.  So he’s pushed into the psychiatric ward where a committee of doctors all conclude they’ve never treated a Native American patient before, wondering if there might be unique aspects to his culture that might explain some of his irrational behavior, so they call upon an eccentric Jewish psychoanalyst from Europe, Georges Devereux (Mathieu Amalric), a Frenchman currently living in New York, known more for his work as an anthropologist, having spent two years living in the desert studying the Mojave Indians, where his methods are considered unorthodox. 

An isolated patient who is believed to be schizophrenic and psychotic, who refuses to talk to anyone else in the military psychiatric hospital, suddenly blossoms in the company of this one particular therapist who takes a more holistic approach, as he’s interested in the Indian tribe where he comes from, where that knowledge can open up clues that introduce a completely new understanding of the patient’s condition, where he’s not psychotic at all, but simply isolated and misdiagnosed, as Indians are not in the habit of confessing their opinions and personal feelings to white people.  Inspired by Devereaux’s book Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, the story itself is fascinating, where the film becomes a meticulous, near clinical exposé, mostly the retelling of dreams, where instead of imaginative, dreamlike imagery, the film retains a near scientific guideline for the narrative to unravel, usually downplayed, where the film is likely to be a virtual recreation of the literary work, taking few liberties, and in spite of superior acting talent, the film presents the material as straightforward as possible.  Del Toro, who is Puerto Rican, has made a career playing some version of the non-white character, where this role is reminiscent of his earlier work playing a mentally challenged Indian in Sean Penn’s The Pledge (2001), a role that apparently landed him this job.  In each he speaks barely decipherable English, expanding the physical component to the roles where his burly physique actually matches a similar character in Milos Forman’s ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), which curiously features a completely silent but large Indian man locked up in the psychiatric ward with nothing apparently wrong with him other than he’s lost the will to act, so he sits quietly among the disturbed patients and makes no judgments until the end, when he decides it’s better living as a free man on the outside. What’s also interesting in each is the European take on what are distinctly American stories, where Forman was one of the most important directors of the Czechoslovak New Wave, while Desplechin is a worthy heir to the French New Wave, whose films often feature some of the best French actors working today.  In some ways, this cultural twist becomes part of the narrative storyline, as Jimmy and Georges are both seen as exiled, though they deal with it differently, as both are a long way from “home.” 

For Europeans, for instance, the Indian is still a mythical figure, known largely from what was told to them by whites, where this film offered the director a chance to explore deeper into what is admittedly unknown territory.  While much of this may feel academic, as Jimmy continually recounts what he can recall from dreams and from his childhood, where mostly Georges listens and engages his patient by taking an interest, where he is genuinely concerned about his welfare, which in turn makes the patient take more of an interest in himself.  Using a swirling Hollywood musical score by Howard Shore, but also the superb miniature poetry from the first two sections of Debussy’s Petite Suite, Claude Debussy - En Bateau - YouTube (3:14) and Claude Debussy Petite Suite : Cortège piano - YouTube (3:24), the film was shot mostly in the state of Michigan and Montana, where there is fluidity to the past melding with the present, as the headaches begin to occur less frequently, suggesting they are on the right track.  There are a few detours along the road where Jimmy heads for the nearest bar to commiserate about his troubles, but what’s interesting is that it’s a bar that includes Indians, something rarely shown in American pictures.  What this really amounts to is a buddy picture, something along the lines of Gene Hackman and Al Pacino in Jerry Schatzberg’s SCARECROW (1973), a couple of unlikely outsiders that end up hitchhiking on the road together, developing an unusual rapport that touched a nerve with the American counterculture at the time.  This is a much smaller film where one Indian’s mental collapse is symptomatic for what was done to the entire Native American population, all driven off their land by the U.S. cavalry in the late 19th century and herded to isolated reservations in the middle of nowhere with little to no resources to survive, often the poorest places to live in the entire United States, where one of the currently existing side effects of this involuntary exile are the highest rates of alcoholism and suicide, reflective of the mental, psychological, and economic depression.  While this film is not a history lesson, it simply shows interest in the life of a single Indian, where the interest is in Devereaux’s recollection of every single word of dialogue from those sessions, never resorting to broad gestures, cinematic gimmicks, or adding dramatic embellishments, instead trusting the significance of the material as being historically authentic.  While we’re not normally privy to the secret confines of therapy sessions, this film targets the often undiagnosed pain and sadness that accompany the human condition, where it takes some soul searching to find the underlying causes of physical breakdown, trauma, and dysfunction, where in this case 65% of returning World War II veterans were mentally injured, yet few received any treatment.  

Alois Nebel

ALOIS NEBEL           B                     

Czech Republic  Germany  (84 mi)  2011  d: Tomáš Lunák       Official site [cz]

Eastern European films often reflect a grim interior mood, especially when rooted in history, where living under the boot of military occupation, an imposed Soviet communist dictatorship and political repression only describes the tip of the iceberg, where a closer examination often reveals scathingly inhumane details.  This film marks Tomás Lunák's feature debut as a director and the first rotoscope animation done in The Czech Republic, an interesting technique to use for such a realistic historical overview.  Just the opening few shots set the tone for the film, where from out of total darkness comes the first glimpses of light, soon recognized as a train heading down the tracks.  Set in a small town located near the Polish border in a peaceful area of Czechoslovakia’s Jesenik Mountains in 1989, just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are quickly introduced to Alois Nebel, the stationmaster at a remote countryside railway station.  Just as we think not much happens in this isolated region, a stranger appears out of the darkness, seen earlier hanging around the railway station, and he appears to be making a desperate attempt to cross the border, though he may have had other intentions, without much luck apparently as he is quickly captured.  This incident seems to trigger something in Nebel’s mind, where the German translation for the word nebel is fog, as he inexplicably becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative, as if retreating into a fog.  He is sent to an asylum where he witnesses the torture of the captured man, who appears to be a mute, so it’s impossible for him to confess, which triggers childhood flashbacks going back to the end of World War II. 

Without offering any historical backdrop, the director assumes Czechs are familiar with their own history, where the mountainous border regions of Czechoslovakia were largely comprised of a German-speaking population, known as the Sudetenland, where it was actually part of Germany until the end of World War I when it became part of Czechoslovakia.  Germans continued to live in the region without incident, but with the Nazi threat to invade Czechoslovakia, Hitler got Britain, France, and Italy to sign the Munich Agreement in 1938 returning the Sudetenland to Germany, a bone of contention with the Russians who occupied the Eastern Czech territory at the end of the war, ruthlessly expelling all the Germans, totalling a half million just from this region, including a young German girl Dorothe, who befriended Nebel as a young boy, emblematic of a larger injustice imposed by the Soviet Red Army, placing the Germans in concentration camps where many died of starvation and disease.  It’s interesting to see the Germans portrayed in a sympathetic light during World War II, especially since they occupied Czechoslovakia during the war, but it’s the Russians that occupied the country militarily ever since and are seen in the present still running corrupt black market businesses, cheating the locals out of potential income, hoarding it all for themselves, seen as drunken louts maintaining a monopoly on all incoming goods.  The picture of state repression, seen by the ruthlessly brutal way they run the asylum, is reminiscent of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), an Academy Award winning film and Best Director for Czech compatriot Milos Forman, whose parents were both killed in Auschwitz. 

The mute prisoner escapes, having his own traumatic war story, and shortly afterwards Nebel is released, only to discover he’s lost his job at the station, so he makes his way to Prague, which is undergoing a bureaucratic restructuring under the newly elected democratic leadership of Vaclav Havel.  But Nebel is homeless and destitute, sleeping in railway stations until he’s befriended by the widow of a former railway man, Kveta, who respects the work ethic and commitment of railway workers, always standing up for them, including a few free meals for Nebel.  It’s amusing to see the Russians moan about being left out of the democratic picture, soon forced out of their jobs, eventually forced to exit the country, which allows Nebel to have his former job back in the countryside.  The film is told much like a historical fairytale with grim references to bleak times under Soviet domination, which are never clearly explained and are simply woven together into the multi-stranded narrative.  Nebel’s own mental disintegration reflects that of the nation which must come to terms with their own dark history.  The film offers a quietly reflective tone throughout, featuring pensive characters often seen staring out of windows, where an unusual guitar score from Petr Kruzik is reminiscent of Neil Young’s haunting score of DEAD MAN (1995).  In a gorgeously designed storm sequence where nature batters the mountainous region, what stands out is the recurrent snow and rain continually pelting the countryside, expressing the severity of existential alienation, a tone of Dostoyevskian angst, given a psychic electro shock, where the audience may feel as discombobulated as Nebel. Lunák attempts to combine many of the thematic elements reflective of the freedom and optimism of the Velvet Revolution, where having finally gotten rid of the Russians, people are given the opportunity to simply live their lives.    

Beloved (Les Bien-Aimés)

BELOVED (Les Bien-Aimés)           B+                      

France  Great Britain  Czech Republic  (135 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d: Christophe Honoré

Christophe Honoré, a regular early contributor to Cahiers du Cinéma and an established novelist before he became a filmmaker, has developed into a remarkable cinematic storyteller, as his films are layered with meticulous novelesque detail.  A film dedicated to Marie-France Pisner, who died April 24, 2011, one of the screenwriters and actresses in Jacques Rivette’s landmark film Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont ... (1974), and an actress in Honoré’s own DANS PARIS (2006), which remains arguably his best film, and the first of his films where out of the blue one of his characters will break into song, much like the surprising use in MAGNOLIA (1999), which he uses to tender effect in a telephone conversation between lovers, a moment that rises to magical heights.  By now, he’s written several musicals, exploring the dynamics of a three-way relationship in LOVE SONGS (2007) and the pent-up passion in a Sirkian youth melodrama in LA BELLE PERSONNE (2008).  Honoré’s films tend to leave audiences sharply divided, and his use of songs as an extension of the narrative is no exception, as he doesn’t accompany songs with traditional dance numbers, or a lively choreographed sequence, but instead delves into the downbeat psychological mindset of the character, often submerged in anguish, lost love or grief, where musical numbers are used in the exact opposite manner of one’s usual association, which is happy and upbeat, such as Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964).  There’s even an umbrella sequence in this film which takes place in the howling wind and rain where the umbrellas are about to be blown away, and instead of the vivid kaleidescope colors, the frame is dark and dreary.  Honoré has been consistent in his career in exploring matters of the heart through non-conventional means, where MA MÈRE (2004) remains as unconventional a film as you’ll ever see, but also a film that makes terrific use of a recurring musical motif, the song “Happy Together” by The Turtles.  Music has always been one of the best attributes of an Honoré film, from the bone-jarring rock music used to disorienting effect in 17 TIMES CÉCILE CASSARD (2002) to the punk music that sets the stage for a moody and introspective assault to the senses in DANS PARIS.  In nearly every film, grief is a major element for the prominent characters, where his films show unusual levels of depth and complexity by intensely exploring how love is like memory, never disappearing, forever etched into the fabric of our lives.

One of the real treats of this film is seeing Catherine Deneuve work with her daughter, Chiara Mastroianni (who’s been in every Honoré film since LOVE SONGS), where one cannot help recalling Jacques Demy’s bliss-drenched THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (1967), where the main attraction is the adorable sisters, blond Catherine Deneuve and her older sister, brunette Françoise Dorléac, at ages 24 and 25, both stars from their teens, as this is the only time they ever worked together onscreen.  Deneuve has worked with her daughter before in André Téchiné’s charming MY FAVORITE SEASON (1993), also more recently in Arnaud Desplechin’s dysfunctional family portrait, A CHRISTMAS TALE (2008), but this is the first time they’ve worked together in a musical, and their scenes together are simply stunning.  Mastroianni, especially, as Véra, the daughter of Deneuve’s character Madeleine, is at the heart of the film, as her emotional turmoil reflects the anxiety of the era in which she grew up, the late 80’s and 90’s when the world was coming to terms with AIDS, where the terrifying idea of love is as under attack as the human body.  Ludivine Sagnier plays Madeleine as a young girl in the years before she had a child, where this film spans four decades from 1964 to 2008.  In the fashionable 60’s, Madeleine is strikingly attractive, catching the eye of an equally handsome and ambitious young Czech doctor, Jaromil (Radivoje Bukvic), very much in the mode of the Daniel Day-Lewis character from Philip Kaufman’s historical romance THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1968).  Completely offscreen, in a blip of the eye, they fall in love, get married, move to Prague, have a child, and get divorced, before she’s seen later in Paris.  But Jaromil returns to Paris years later, maintaining an on-again and off-again relationship throughout her life, even after she’s married to François (Michel Delpech), supposedly a stabilizing influence in her life.  Véra, meanwhile, develops an infatuation with two different men, one with fellow Parisian Clément (Louis Garrel, who’s been in every Honoré film since MA MÈRE) that’s already over by the time it hits the screen, and another with an American exile in London, a drummer named Henderson, played by Paul Schneider, from David Gordon Green’s ALL THE REAL GIRLS (2003) and Jane Campion’s more recent BRIGHT STAR (2009), where the tempestuous confusion in their relationship is fraught with difficulty. 

As Madeleine transforms into Deneuve, Jaromil is amusingly played by Czech director Milos Forman, adding plenty of warmth and humor into his character, as he’s simply delighted to be around his ex-wife and daughter whenever he can, often making trips to Paris to revitalize his relationships.  Part of the appeal of this film is the use of actual locations in Paris, Reims, Prague, London, and Montreal, where Honoré uses his traditional cinematographer Rémy Chevrin and original music from Alex Beaupain, both of whom have worked with him on and off since his first film.  Chevrin’s hand-held camera work is simply superb, both in capturing the bustling energy from the world outdoors and in some of the most extreme close ups ever captured.  Beaupain’s songs are not to be compared with the legendary Michel Legrand, as none are particularly memorable, but they do feature the delightfully charming Ludivine Sagnier singing “Je peux vivre sans toi” Je peux vivre sans toi - Les Bien-Aimés (Extrait) - YouTube (3:03), or Clara Couste as a young Véra singing "TOUT EST SI CALME"- Les Bien Aimés Fi (2:39), an ensemble piece which interestingly features older characters of both Véra and Madeleine interacting in the same shot with younger versions of themselves.  In perhaps the scene of the film, Véra has the bar band experience of her life as she meets Henderson for the first time, the drummer in the British band that’s singing the 1956 Bo Diddley classic “Who Do You Love?” Thousand - Who Do You Love - Chiara Mas (2:58) in English, later heard again in a French refrain that is decidedly more downbeat Les Bien-Aimés - Qui aimes-tu? (2:44).  Perhaps more than any other director working today, Honoré continues to work on riffs off the French New Wave, often expressing the ebullient energy of youth in vibrantly colorful street sequences, but also the downside of this blissful and breezy existence, exploring the personal introspection and brooding nature of lost and adrift people who feel disconnected from the world around them, becoming painfully heavy at times, where the psychological torment can literally suffocate these characters, some of whom never recover.