The Cinema Therapy Newsletter #53
February 2014
Cinematherapy.com
bwolz@earthlink.net

New Resources:

On YouTube, Taryn Southernan, an American singer, actress and comedian, describes and analyzes the following movies in a humorous fashion: Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit, Ride Along and The Nut Job as well as I, Frankenstein, Gimme Shelter, and Due Date as well as Labor Day, That Awkward Moment and At Middleton.

Watch Stream Full Movie Online allows viewers to stream and download movies here and here.

Online Course and Programs:

Online Course

Birgit Wolz

DSM-5: Diagnoses Seen in Movies: Using Movies to Understand Common DSM Diagnoses
Movies are particularly well suited to depict psychological phenomena. The combination of images, music, dialogue, lighting, camera angles, and sound effects in a film mimic thoughts and feelings that occur in our consciousness. The viewer experiences what a character sees and feels. Since characters in many popular films portray persons who live with mental disorders, these depictions offer a unique learning opportunity.
This course provides up-to-date information about common DSM-5 diagnoses by exploring the most relevant changes in the diagnosis of psychopathology from the DSM IV-TR to the DSM-5. It offers an effective tool to help clinicians use the DSM-5 for effective treatment planning, and for communicating with colleagues as well as with insurance companies.

Cinema Therapy Certification Programs

1. For information about all Cinema Therapy online courses click here.
2. One certification program is designed for mental health professionals - click here.
3. Another, shorter, certification course can be taken by anybody (no prerequisites required) - click here.

- Upon completion of a program, students will receive a ready-to-be-framed certificate of completion for their course of study, "Cinema Therapy."
- These programs can be completed in more than one session over a three-year period.
- Continuing education credits can be earned with either program.

The certificate programs are composed of individual courses, which can also be taken separately.

Continuing education credits are available for all courses for Psychologists (APA), MFTs & LCSWs (CA-BBS), Social Workers (ASWB) and counselors in California and other states. Click here for more information.

New Blogs and Websites:

Drew Chial describes his profound experiences with different movies throughout his life in Andrew: A Story About Cinema Therapy.

Reviews

Thumbnail Reviews by Karin Leonard & Daniel Robin:

Each month, Karin and Daniel select their favorite or otherwise important films. They rate them, subjectively, on a scale from 1 (worthless) to 5 (awesome) in terms of their entertainment and message. They leave the plot details and storytelling to the filmmakers and instead attempt to characterize, highlight strengths and flaws, and hint at purpose. You can reach them at movies@innerevolution.com.

About Time

With Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy
Entertainment: 3.5 Message: 4

A deeply romantic and fun romp of the imagination in the form of "terrestrial SciFi," directed by Timothy Curtis (Love Actually), which is at once a fabulous metaphor to be fully present in the now, and a timeless reminder to intentionally live each moment. Questions? You could choose, as we did, to just go with it. Sentimental and silly in places, the romance and enchantment make up for most of the plot flaws. Charmingly acted and heartfelt, this is a great Date Night movie, as well as inspiring family entertainment (especially for quirky father/son teams), or even for future family members (2 hrs 3 min).

Frozen

With Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Idina Menzel
Entertainment: 4 Message: 4.5

Based on a much-beloved story by Hans Christian Andersen ("The Snow Queen"), visually gorgeous, with fantastic animation and enchanting musical performances, this heartwarming story is set in a frozen winter wonderland with much to offer for kids of all ages. Although beautifully entertaining (literally several hundred animators created this for Disney), the messages delivered are aplenty. Coming-of-age and coming-to-terms with powerful emotions, learning authentic self-expression given our unique gifts, how to be safe but still true to one's spirit, the enduring strength of love, and carefully evaluating who we might choose to bond with. Definitely see on a big screen (1 hr 48 min).

Thor: The Dark World

With Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins
Entertainment: 4 Message: 3.5

Heavy-handed, bombastic and over-the-top, just as heavens inhabited by Viking gods and Demi-gods should be! Here, the celestial realms are a mélange of fantasy and science fiction, myth and technology. Thankfully, a good dose of humor and humanness balance Divine Grandeur with ridiculous comic book fare. Chris Hemsworth as thunderous Thor and Natalie Portman as his human love interest/scientist, Jane Foster, once again bring magnetic chemistry, while the supporting cast adds spunk, humor and plenty of characters to Marvel at. If you enjoy this franchise, you won't be disappointed (1 hr 52 min).

Review by Birgit Wolz:

Eat Drink Man Woman (Trailer)
"Yin shi nan nu" (original title)

Director: Ang Lee
Producer: Li-Kong Hsu
Screenplay: Ang Lee, James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang
Cast: Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei-Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang, Winston Chao, Chao-Jung Chen
Year of Release: 1994 (in Mandarin with English subtitles)

Review

Eat Drink Man Woman explores the relationship between the retired Taiwanese consummate master chef, Tao Chu, and his three beautiful, very different adult daughters who still live at home when the movie begins. Living a quiet life of mostly simple pleasures, he spends much of his time lonely at home or cooking obsessively for the family's weekly ceremonial, multi-course Sunday dinners and doing his daughters' laundry while they are at work.

Food is as much a backdrop as a recurring symbol in this film. Mr. Chu's failing taste buds parallel his loss of zest for life. He is considered a great man in Taipei's culinary circles, but not at home, where his relationships with his children are deteriorating. It appears as if Tao Chu directs all of still available passions and grand statements into his cooking, so that he may operate on the cool and resilient level that works best in dealing with his daughters. But his flavorful food delights are also an expression of his love for his family.

Since Chu's wife died 16 years ago, he raised his children alone. Now his daughters feel obligated to look after him although they have different ideas about what they want to do with their lives. Their family life consists of the Sunday dinners, where - despite the scrumptious fine food - tensions run so high that the participants sometimes barely eat. Lately these gatherings mostly serve the purpose to make important announcements, which push the four farther apart. They don't have much in common and therefore don't have much else to say to each other.

Jia-Jen, the oldest daughter, a schoolteacher in her late twenties, feels especially responsible for the family and her father. She acts like a mother to her sisters and makes many sacrifices for the family. Jia-Jen teaches a rowdy roomful of horny adolescent boys while she is still nursing wounds from a romance that evaporated long ago. She is cynical about love in general. She uses her Christian faith to cope with her disappointments and gain strength to carry on. Nonetheless, the young woman slowly starts to open up when she meets the new gym teacher and volleyball coach in her school. This helps her to eventually to lay down the burdens that she had put on her own shoulders.

Jia-Chien, the middle daughter, is a respectable, career driven corporate airline executive, who has no time for her family and wants to escape from it as soon as possible. She begins a scrumptiously close working partnership with a colleague. Her relationship to her father is the most difficult one among the sisters. As a child, she would have preferred to practice the culinary arts that her dad so magically practiced by becoming a cook herself. But she was not allowed to become one, even though she proved to have quite some talent. Chu wanted his daughter to lead a better life than him, and therefore wanted her get a university education. Yet this somewhat destroyed their relationship.

Jia-Ning, the youngest of the three, is a twenty-year-old innocent romantic who goes to college and comes up with tuition money by working at a Wendy's fast food joint. She wants to get along with everyone, until she loses a friendship with a fickle coworker because she falls for her friend's boyfriend.

Tao Chu himself mostly notices his daughters' romantic, professional, and emotional developments by observing how they make less frequent and more restless appearances at their Sunday night dinners. As the film progresses, the daughters' new relationships blossom, their roles change, and the day they will move out of their father's home draws near.

Thus Chu will have to live on his own in the future. He starts to focus on other relationships. With his friend Jin-Rong's little daughter he builds a father-daughter relationship. He provides the girl with delicious multi-course school lunches while eating the less tasty food that Jin-Rong had prepared for her daughter. When Tao's nest is finally empty, he plays with the idea to take the loquacious Mrs. Liang as his wife.

Cinema Alchemy

I had seen 62-year-old Mimi for several months. Originally, she came to me for support with her worries around life transitions, such as moving to a bigger house in order to be able to take in her 94-year-old ailing mother. Still working fulltime, she felt overwhelmed by the new responsibilities that came with taking care of her mom. My client had a quasi-platonic, off-and-on romance with a slightly younger man, named Omar, for several years. He was interested in a closer relationship but she kept him at arms length because she didn't think that she was good enough for him.

During a recent session, Mimi mentioned that she saw Eat Drink Man Woman the previous night. She mentioned that she had repeatedly watched this film before because she loved it. Letting her know that I had not seen it, I asked my client to tell me more about her fascination with this movie. Mimi enjoyed how Tao Chu feeds his daughters. "That's what this movie is about for me", she said. Mimi specifically liked one scene. "In that scene", she continued, "the dad puts a dumpling on a spoon and feeds one of his daughters like a bird. Although both frown, which shows that they have problems, the father appears loving and nurturing to me."

What Mimi said made me wonder about a potential father-daughter issue that might have manifested in her relationships with men. And in fact, upon further inquiry, she told me under tears that she never received this kind of caring attention from her own dad. Her parents got divorced when she was very young. Since then my client had hardly seen her father any more. She never developed a close relationship to her stepfather because he was distant and very strict.

For our next session I suggested hypnotherapy with Film Re-entry. I explained to my client that I would guide her imagination to "enter" the movie in trance at the scene that had impacted her the most. Mimi liked this idea.

When we met again, I asked Mimi to close her eyes. I induced a light trance state and asked her first to find a safe, quiet and peaceful place as well as a wise, compassionate, and loving being, an "Inner Advisor" or "Inner Guide". This process helped her to relax deeper and get in touch with her inner wisdom. Her advisor appeared as a Tibetan guru. Now I encouraged Mimi to imagine that she steps into the movie screen at a scene of her choice and in the company and under the protection of her advisor.

Mimi "entered" into her favorite scene and remarked how sweet and touching it looks when Chu feeds his daughter. I encouraged her to ask her Inner Advisor why she feels drawn to this scene and how this attraction relates to her own life. My client's advisor told her that this scene highlights the love and nurturing from a dad that she always yearned for and never received. He continued explaining that this led to feelings of emptiness, and consequently to immature reactive and self-protective behavior with her romantic partners. For example, she pushed Omar away because he was not consistently available. Pushing him away made her feel strong.

With the help of her guide, Mimi started feeling compassion with the part of her that she called her "little girl that feels empty and needy". Subsequently my client saw that she also had a more mature adult self with real strength. This part was better able to tolerate vulnerability and to distinguish Omar's issues from hers. From the perspective of this adult self she saw that his lack of consistency does not indicate that she is not lovable.

After she came back to ordinary consciousness, I explained to Mimi that her Inner Advisor expresses the view of her own inner wise self. She was amazed how her new insights during the Film Re-entry process had led to a significant shift. Now my client was able to recognize the impact of her experiences with her dad and step-dad on her romantic relationships. She had not been able to trust her romantic partners for decades because she did not believe that she was worth being loved. Therefore she frequently sabotaged relationships by keeping her distance.

The Film Re-entry and our subsequent work helped Mimi develop an increased sense of self-worth. Soon her focus changed from her concern about being lovable to the question whether she wants to be in a relationship with Omar despite his lack of consistency. My client started wondering now what he had to offer to their relationship. This newfound clarity helped Mimi bring more directness into her communication with Omar. Her increased inner strength and self-worth also reduced her struggle with her life transitions.

Theoretical Contemplations

Although Eat Drink Man Woman plays entirely in Taiwan, the themes of this film are universal. The difficulty of communicating across the generation gap is very common.

I rarely recommend foreign movies to clients because reading subtitles can interfere with their multi-sensory experience and therefore possibly reduce the emotional impact of the film. For Mimi this turned out not to be true.

In most cases, it does not matter whether I have seen the movies that affected my clients. Actually, I noticed that sometimes being unfamiliar with a film can be an advantage because I am forced to picture a scene through the clients' eyes, like their dreams. When they see themselves as experts in knowing a movie, greater rapport is possible as well as an increased likelihood for more independence in the therapeutic relationship.

In the Film Re-entry process the therapist tracks the inner path of progressive imagery to a place where the client is able to reconnect to the essential resources and the source needed to transform or release a previously unconscious pattern.

Guidelines for Work with for Clients using Film Re-entry

• Ask clients to close their eyes and induce a light trance state.

• Ask clients to

• find a safe, quiet and peaceful place and "Inner Advisor",

• in company of the advisor, "step into the movie screen" at an impactful movie scene of their choice,

• explore the relevance of the scene for their own life with the help of the advisor.

• Encourage clients to

• reflect on insights when they return to ordinary consciousness,

• contemplate how these insights might result in changed views of self and others and/or healthier behavior.

 

Thanks for reading. I encourage and welcome feedback.

Birgit Wolz, Ph.D., MFT Author of E-Motion Picture Magic Loch Lomond, CA, USA bwolz@earthlink.net