'The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit'; the life, loves, poetry and prophecy of Allen Ginsberg. A review of the movie 'HOWL'

 an incendiary bomb of a poem

So the verdict? and this is a movie that revolves around judgement and verdict. Is Ginsbergs poem obscene or isn't it? Is it likely to 'arouse lustful desires' or isn't it? Is this film good or is it, well.. crap?  Would Allen be turning in his grave or would the old angel headed hipster be quietly amused, or screaming with joy even!!!

To begin with I was ready to dislike this movie, thinking of punning put-downs-howls of derision, a Howler etc. I must confess my aversion to biopics, which are usually far too literal and pedestrian in my opinion. I was ready to take exception with the multitude of representational devices and forms; the switching from black and white to colour, from live action to animation. I was ready to be insulted and offended by cinematic mediocrity, ready to defend the integrity of Allen's vision, his prophecy. It took real conviction to write Howl (much of it is about madness, the madness that had destroyed not just the best minds of his generation and nearly his, but his mothers too) and stand up and read it in public for the first time, to stand up for his truth, to confront the censors. To begin with I felt this film was singularly lacking in any kind of comparable artistic conviction. For heaven's sake why two directors (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman-almost a committee)? Here's a film that initially looks like its trying too hard to be experimental, with too many cooks stirring the bohemian broth.

 BUT...

 wait a minute, stick with it, this film ain't half bad and if like me you're moved by Ginsberg, the man and his work you might not be totally disappointed, and dare I say it maybe even a little inspired, or re-inspired. In fact it'll probably make you want to return to the original text, which really can't be beat and still sounds impressive fifty years since it's first public reading, and is surely just as relevant today. The directors vision might not meet everyone's expectations, or the animated sequences, which have been described as a kind of Beat Fantasia, Disney on acid, dope, or peyote.

The film switches from black and white to vintage slightly washed out colour in the live action and to brilliant saturated colour for the animated sequences.

Yes, this film is actually rather good. Hats off to James Franco for his lovely understated performance; a nice mix of nerdy 'n' intense, sexy 'n' intelligent. The DVD notes and packaging say he is Allen Ginsberg, and this is no idle boast he really seems to have got under the skin of the lovely man and embody him and his sensibility (more than can be said for the actor who plays Kerouac). Some of the best scenes are of Ginsberg as young writer in his run down apartment being interviewed about the use of candour in writing, an interview which includes a touching recollection of an exchange with his psychotherapist.
I don't usually like courtroom dramas, but I loved all the deliberating and philosophising (surprisingly intelligent and sophisticated) on what is and isn't obscene. By the way did anyone else notice the resemblance between one of the uptight prosecution witnesses (Gail Potter 'you feel like you are going through the gutter when you read that stuff') and one time Republican hopeful and hockey mum Sarah Palin? I found the defence attorney and judges closing statements about the dangers of censorship adding fuel to the fire of ignorance, very moving.

As one of the defendants reminds us in the courtroom proceedings you 'cant translate poetry into prose..and that's why its poetry'. I guess you could also say you cant translate poetry into film but this movie gets pretty close to capturing the spirit of Ginsberg.

 trippy animation

I rather liked Eric Drooker's trippy animated sequences, I know lots of reviewers didn't. Its just a pity the animated sequences can't be watched uninterrupted, illustrating the poem Howl in its entirety. I thought you might be able to do this in the extras section but there's no such facility.  I liked the sexual playfulness (lets face it you don't see many dicks and ejaculatory fireworks in Pixar), the jazzy boho chic urban lansdcapes, the hallucinatory Van Gogh like starry New York night skies and I especially the liked the sequences depicting the all consuming monstrous nightmare of Moloch.

'Moloch! the heavy judger of men'

Ginsberg's railing against Moloch ('what sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate out their brains') is one of the most powerful passages in HOWL. From a Buddhist perspective it's interesting to consider exactly what Ginsberg was getting at here. Later in his life Ginsberg offered more of a dharmic interpretation saying Moloch was in fact a reference to the machinations of the mind, the hell we create with the mind; dualism? I guess in Blakean terms you could say Moloch is all that keeps our mind forged manacles in place.

'Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy'

Any doubts I had about his movie were swept away in the closing sequences with the recitation of the brilliant footnote to HOWL- the delirious declamatory epiphany 'Holy' (which incidentally Patti Smith has done a rather good cover version of) a challenge to splitting and spiritual bypassing, a celebration of the non-dual. And then a poignant touch, we finally see moving footage of the real Allen, a kind genteel elderly Ginsberg reciting his poem Father Death not long before his death, welcoming impermanence, facing it with dignity and equanimity.

So reader you've probably realised I rate this movie, it's not the greatest movie ever made, but yes I liked it, 'the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit', and I think this movie may be of particular interest to anyone interested in spiritual emergence and spiritual emergency.

A review of the book 'Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters'

Has anyone ever suggested you might be 'spiritual bypassing'? Or perhaps you've come to that conclusion yourself and experienced that awful penny dropping moment when you realise your apparent spirituality is not quite what it seems or how you'd like it to be seen. There you were  luxuriating in your wisdom and spiritual correctness and the next moment your fine apparel is seen for what it is- a complete delusion, a sham, the emperors new clothes. It can feel incredibly exposing, and shamemaking. Just when you were feeling so accomplished, and pleased with yourself you're rumbled.

Robert Augustus Masters book on the pitfalls of spirituality and how a pseudo spirituality can be used to avoid what really matters in life should be required reading for anyone interested in the spiritual life. This easy to read, interesting book invites us to take a hard yet compassionate look at our spiritual life, and may be of particular interest to anyone like myself who try to combine a spiritual practice and spiritual outlook with work in the helping professions that includes both the personal and transpersonal. I've been thinking of these issues a lot recently in relation to how I promote my psychotherapy practice, my website, leaflet and this blog. How to be authentic? How to convey an interest in the spiritual without falsely representing it. How to be real.

In each chapter of his book Masters, an Intuitive Integral Psychotherapist, investigates a different bypass we can take on the spiritual journey including: blind compassion; a neurotic tolerance that is unhelpful to the self and others (Chogyam Trungpa described this with Zen-like directness verging on the harsh as idiot compassion, and this book covers similar territory to his 'Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism' but it is written from more a psychotherapy perspective, although I think Masters could have placed more emphasis on spiritual bypassing as a conditioned response and defence against suffering, something that is done for a reason and shouldn't be attacked, but understood and worked through); ignoring the shadow; disowning and problematising anger (Masters is critical of 'Buddhist elders like Thich Nhat Than' and 'New age positivity pushers' for discouraging the direct expression of anger); quick spiritual fixes and high speed recipes for enlightenment; magical thinking and superstition; the ways we use sex, and being spiritually gullible and vulnerable to cult control and manipulation.

Masters argues spirituality is 'not an escape from life's difficulties' but 'a way of embracing and illuminating them.' He also describes something called the 'soul's embrace' which is 'both panoramic and particular, touching the universal without neglecting the personal and interpersonal'.  I was reminded of something a psychotherapist once said to me when I was expressing blind faith in the power of the universe:

 'Trust in the universe and tie up your camels?'

'Just be yourself'; a review of the movie Edward Scissorhands.

Edward Scissorhands is my favourite Tim Burton film. Its a beautiful modern fairy tale, brilliantly cast and acted with great designs (fantastic use of colour and costume), and a lovely Danny Elfman soundtrack that soars and sweeps you along with the unfolding drama. It's a delightful entertainment-clever, funny and satirical. It asks us to consider what exactly is normal and how we respond to difference.  From the perspective of psychotherapy this film may also be of interest for anyone interested in developmental issues related to the self; how we develop the capacity to reach out and form relationships and how this may be compromised by premature separation.

For those unfamiliar with the plot I'll give a brief synopsis (plot spoilers!). Edward (a youthful Johnny Depp) is a man made creature created by an ailing benevolent Frankenstein like inventor/father figure played by Vincent Price in what poignantly proved to be his last film role (a great exit for the maestro playing against type here as a good guy with a kind heart).

Vincent Price as the kind inventor whose work is cut short

We see the inventor attempting to prepare Edward for life outside the mansion home. 'Ettiquete tells us what is expected and guards us from all humiliation and discomfort'. He reads Edward funny limericks reassuring him that its okay to be amused and smile. Unfortunately for Edward just as the inventor is about to lovingly attach his hands he has a heart attack and dies, and Edward is left alone, an orphan.

Everyone lives in identical homes and goes to work at exactly the same time, and they think he's weird!

One day Edward is discovered by Avon saleslady Peg played brilliantly by Dianne Wiest.  'What happened to you?' she enquires, shocked by his traumatised appearance, his ragged clothes, his scarred face, his scissor hands.  'I'm not finished' he says apologetically.  Reassuring him she's 'as harmless as cherry pie' and wont hurt him, she drives him home to her house in a suburban cul-de-sac (a real location in Tampa, Florida) where he's introduced to her family; husband Bill (a bluecollar worker who's always in his work uniform and ID played by Alan Arkin), son Kevin, and teenage daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). After consulting her 'big Avon handbook' Peg, attends to Edwards wounds, 'light concealing cream and blending is the secret'.

Traumatised and in shock

Word soon gets around the neighbourhood about her strange visitor, and in a fever pitch of curiosity and excitement and just a little sexual hysteria the desperate neighbours (including a nymphomaniac played to great comic effect by the brilliant Kathy Baker), convince Peg to throw a barbecue and pot luck lunch to introduce her mysterious exotic guest.

In a key scene his carer Peg is dressing Edward, getting him ready for the big reveal. Picking up on his nerves she says;

 'there's no need to be nervous. You just have to be yourself, your own sweet self.' 

This is of course completely useless advice as Edwards sense of self is practically non-existent, her advice presupposes there is a self to be. Edward doesn't know who he is, he hasn't had sufficient mirroring.  Burton plays on this theme and there are several scenes where we see Edward looking in the mirror.  The first occasion he is looking in Kim's  mirror which is partly collaged with a montage of photographic images of eyes torn from fashion magazines.  We see Edward staring into the mirror perplexed by what he sees, he seems to be searching for himself.  On another occasion after Peg has been dressing his wounds, she shows him his reflection in the mirror and says 'you look fine, just fine' and at that moment we're reminded of the maternal deficits in his life, just how undernourished he is. Later as Edward discovers his rage we see him looking in a mirror once again this time clawing and shredding the wallpaper surround with his scissorhands.

Looking for the self, the mirror is a recurring motif.

Although his scissorhands make him inept at most activities, including feeding himself, everyone is thrilled when they discover Edward's special gifts, the upside of his disability; his flair for topiary and cutting-edge hairdressing, his fun designs enlivening their dull conformist lives.  In his punky ragged tight fitting black leather suit theres also just a touch of rock'n' roll about him which adds to his appeal.  The outsider becomes a sought after celebrity, even making an appearance on TV, though not everyone is as impressed and fanatical Christian Esmerelda urges the townsfolk to 'expel him' and 'trample down the perversion of nature'.  In another existential reference to his lack of self and identity we see him trying to open a bank account (that great rite of passage for any foreign immigrant), of course he has no ID, no credit, the bank manager declines him commenting 'you may as well not exist'.

Edwards clumsy attempts at reaching out to others or simply defending himself result in inadvertant harm to others. He accidentally hurts the ones he loves most, drawing blood with his 'hands' whenever anyone gets too close.

Predictably the the townsfolk turn against Edward, their blood is up, what identity he had is spoiled, ruined by gossip and innuendo. False allegations of rape and violence circulate and eventually he gets fitted up for a crime he didn't commit.  Ironically in the season of peace and goodwill to all men, the neighbours now no longer fans, more of a baying mob dressed in outlandish festive yuletide costumes drive Edward out of town and back into the solitary confinemnet of the old house on the hill.

Frozen

In the final scenes we see Edward alone in his castle, making ice sculptures of the ones he loves, his adoptive family, they have become fixed and frozen in time, and being artificial, Edward himself will never grow-up, never reach maturity, never age.

A meditation on multiple loss, and grace; a review of the movie 'The Tree of Life'

I love the films of Terrence Malick (especially Badlands) and my expectations were racing when I saw this long awaited film at the Barbican Cinema shortly after it's release last summer. Now the audiences at the Barbican are not your blockbusting popcorn and nacho munching variety, and true to form they sat in complete attentive silence throughout the entire film primed no doubt like me with various articles and reviews they'd already read in the quality press. It is a demanding film, somewhat long (133 minutes), both grandiose and at times so painfully intimate and so private one feels almost like a voyeur. It was hard to read the silence, were people in a state of awe or were they simply bored, or perplexed?

The Tree of Life is unashamedly spiritual in it's vision, religious even and begins with a beautifully poetic quotation from the bible that sets the tone for the rest of the film:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?..

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

                                                                                                               Job 30:4.7

This reference is key, we are being invited to remember, to consider how we were in the very beginning, we are about to enter a state of reverie, Malick's poetic contemplative exploration of a Blakean world of lost innocence and experience, a requiem.

In the first section of the movie we see a mother, the beautiful Jessica Chastain (a Madonna archetype, who is filmed so lovingly I suspect Malick adores her every bit of much as Derek Jarman adored/venerated Tilda Swinton) receiving news every mother must dread, the news of the death of a child, in this case her nineteen year old son, one of three boys. The beautifully filmed scenes that follow are some of the most moving depictions of grief and bereavement on film. As the absent father (Brad Pitt) who's away on a business trip hears the news on long distance telephone a funereal bell tolls in the background.  (Like all Malick films this one has incredibly rich soundtrack; not just beautifully poignant classical music but found sounds which adds to the films intensity. Its suggested you play the DVD loud for optimal effect).  We see neighbours offering their awkward condolences to the family; 'The pain it will pass in time' and harsh truths; 'life goes on, people pass along, nothing stays the same'.

Moving forward in time and we see a besuited bewildered Sean Penn as the older son trapped in a souless corporate office environment, it could be Manhattan or Canary Wharf, a mammon of glass, steel and mirror, with just a brief glimpse of nature, a solitary tree stranded in a plaza. In a voiceover we hear Penn lament 'the worlds gone to the dogs, people are getting greedy, getting worse'. Poor Sean-its not clear if the puzzled expression on his face is acted or a genuine reflection of his emotions as an actor wondering what the hell he's doing in the movie and whether the footage will be used or end up on the cutting room floor. This movie features 'stars' but Malicks way of working is notoriously freeform and requires actors to put their egos to one side and trust in the project, to trust that a certain kind of magic will be found in the moment; the smallest of unscripted gestures, happy accidents (like the chance arrival of a butterfly), the glow of candlelight, the dance of light and shadow. The DVD covers boasts 'Brad Pitt gives the strongest performance of his career'. I dont know about that but he certainly seems willing to take risks with his career and this is another intelligent performance proving once again that he is so much more than a pretty face.

Another leap in time, into the past, and we are at the very beginnings of life, the big bang, creation, call it what you will, fantastically rendered in dazzling non CGI special effects by the same guy who did the SFX for 2001 Space Odyssey. At this point Malick lost a lot of his critics, but I think these scenes are amazing and you've got to hand it to him this is film making at its boldest and most ambitious. This section of the movie includes a much talked about/derided scene with dinosaurs where a large predatory dinosaur places it's foot on the head of a smaller dinosaur. We expect to see the animal crush the other but instead it seems to lose interest and moves on, sparing its life. An obvious point perhaps but Malick seems to be saying we have a choice, we can choose to be destructive or not. We then leave the womb of creation and are back with Jessica Chastain giving birth.

What follows is a series of beautifully filmed intimate vignettes from the young boys childood, we see them struggling with their authoritarian father, we see them playing, exploring the world around them, testing its boundaries, getting into trouble, discovering talents and envious attacks motivated by sibling rivalry. Inevitably this stirs memories of ones own childhood. This may all sound rather prosaic but Malick has a great eye for the numinous, and this section of the movie is as much about lightness and darkness, both real and metaphorical. The photography is breathtakingly beautiful, though I think there is an edge here. Malick seems to be saying open your eyes, LOOK see the beauty around you that's in everything, and if you start to really open to this movie it can feel quite overwhelming. In one touching scene Pitt/ the father (a tragic Willy Loman-like figure) breaks down in remorse 'I wanted to be loved cause I was great, a Big Man.  Look... the glory around...trees, birds... I dishonoured it all and didn't notice the glory'. 

Some critics disliked the Tree of Life because they found it too preachy, over-thought, pretentious even. Personally I don't feel this way. Yes it is in a way an illustrated sermon, it is about lost moral compass. It's sad and melancholic. At one level it's about death and bereavement in a family but at a much deeper level its about the death of knowing our true interconnectedness. In the parlance of Core Process Psychotherapy you could say the film is about the loss of connection with being and source, the loss of faith in the basic goodness in the world and brilliant sanity, how we forget to see the beauty in everything and forget to listen to the heartbeat of what is most precious in each moment of life. The films message is clear, it is I think the same as the Buddha's;

WAKE-UP!

It isn't a depressing film, it has it's flaws but its also uplifting and offers hope. In a key sequence Chastain's voice-over describes the paths we can take in life.

'There are two ways in this life; the way of nature, and the way of grace. 

Chose which one you will follow.

Grace doesn't try to please itself, accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, accepts insults and injuries.

Nature only wants to please itself. It likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world around it is shining and love is smiling through all things'.

I haven't discussed the film's controversial ending but would like to conclude this review with another quote from the film:

'No-one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end' 

Safe treatment?; a review of the David Cronenberg movie 'A Dangerous Method'

I first saw this movie on a quiet Monday afternoon at the Stratford Picture House. There were three other people in the audience and I convinced myself that they must all be psychotherapists like myself filling a quiet afternoon with an entertaining but CPD worthy diversion. At the end of the movie as I left the auditorium an old man turned to me scratching his head and said 'that was all rather deep wasn't it? One for the mind me thinks'. Ah the power of projection...

I'd enjoyed the film and so was interested to see how I'd find it on a second viewing as a DVD.

A Dangerous Method is directed by David Cronenberg, more well known for disturbing horror films like Shivers and The Fly, and this is his adaptation of the Christopher Hampton stage play 'The Talking Cure' about the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; starring Viggo Mortensen as Freud, Michael Fassbender as Jung and Keira Knightley as Jung's famous patient Sabina Spielrein.

I watched the DVD with and without the directors commentary. Cronenberg's commentary reveals I think the problem with this movie. It's not that it's a bad film or an uninteresting film its just that fidelity to form; the historical subject matter (save for some artistic licence in the imagining of sado-masochistic relationship between Jung and his patient Spielrein. There is no evidence as far as I'm aware that he ever spanked her) seems adhered to at the expense of the creative and imaginative flair we might have expected from Cronenberg. So for example in the commentary we hear all about the fastidious lengths the director went to to ensure everything was realistic and historically accurate, including; cleverly CGI-ing a modern Lake Como to make it look like Lake Lucerne, cosmetically crafting a special nose for Freud, finding a garden wall that had just the right texture to stand in for a wall of the Bugelezi Clinic, and having a facsimile made of Freud's original chair. So what we get is a reverential, respectable, largely historically accurate if rather low-key conventional film; all a bit Open University and not that cinematic. I found myself wondering what Ken Russell would have made of the same material if he'd been commissioned to make this film in his early BBC Monitor years (I'm thinking of those wonderful biopics on Debussy and Elgar).

Moretensen's and Fassbender's performances are subtle and strong, both managing to convey the intense intellect and interiority of their characters, Mortensen is especially good as a wily chain-smoking Freud (his skin seems yellow and parchment like from so much nicotine), Fassbender is a little bland in places and hard to reconcile with the creative genius who wrote and illustrated the Red Book, but Keira Knightley is more problematic. For a start unlike Mortensen and Fassbenber who speak English with precise diction Knightley's character speaks English with an unconvincing cod Russian accent. In his commentary Cronenberg suggests Knightley is 'more than a trooper', and threw herself into the part 'with great exuberance' (including another pond, though unlike the pond scene in Atonement a film incidentally where I thought she was rather good, this time she comes up covered in mud/shit -a symbol perhaps of her descent into the unconscious). In his commentary Cronenberg says casting can make or break a film commending Knightley and Fassbender's oncscreen chemistry, but I can't but help feel she's miscast here, there's too much jaw-jutting overacting and gurning.

The film is strong on the father/son like relationship and rivalry of Jung and Freud, I particularly liked the way Jung's concept of synchronicity is explored. There is also an excellent performance by Vincent Cassel as maverick psychoanalyst and anarchist Otto Gross (who also had his father issues-his father had him incarcerated at the Bugelezi Clinic). Gross who argued one should 'never repress anything' and can be seen as a personification of the ID, gives tacit permissive support to Jung's taboo breaking sexual relationship with patient Spielrein (who went onto become a pioneer of child analysis and was murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust), a dual relationship which would be considered a gross violation of boundaries and serious misconduct judged by today's professional standards. We see Cassel as a bearded unkempt but rather charismatic Gross sniffing cocaine, rifling through Jung's office looking for drugs and having sex with a uniformed female nurse in the grounds of the Clinic. There's an edge and aliveness in these scenes with Cassel that seems lacking elsewhere in the movie, and I was disappointed the Gross character didn't feature more than it does, and the challenge of his views is never really addressed. Another movie perhaps?

In my opinion this isn't a great movie, in its earnest bid for fairness and historical objectivity it somehow never quite takes off, and remains rather literal, but I think it will be of interest to anyone who has ever had psychotherapy and especially interesting to analysts. There's so much of Freudian and Jungian psychology we take for granted today and the film reminds us just how revolutionary Freud and Jung's ideas were and how divergent their thinking eventually became.

Anyone interested in a Jungian analysis of this film might be interested in a series of lectures posted on Andrew Samuels website www.andrewsamuels.com . The six lectures includes a very interesting lecture by Samuels himself where he explores interesting themes connected to the movie including: the overlap of narrative truth and historical truth, polyamory and 'kink', what Sabina Spielrein tells us about structural forms of the feminine psyche and psychoanalysis and anti-semitism.