Therapeutic Movie Review Column

By Birgit Wolz, Ph.D., MFT

Frida

Review

Frida is a biographic movie of the iconic, passionate, communist, bisexual Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo. The film shows many major challenges that Kahlo faced with strength, persistence, and courage throughout her life of forty-seven years.

Born to a German Jewish father and a Mexican mother in 1907, she grows up in Mexico City at a time when it is teeming with famous exiles. Her parents' relationship is filled with conflict. Despite financial constraints, she demonstrates what, in her time and culture, is an unusual determination by going to school to become a doctor.

When Frida is 18 years old, her studies are cut short by a trolley crash that almost kills her. Bones are shattered in her spine, pelvis and foot. Her body is pierced with a steel rod. While recovering, her young lover leaves her. Frida goes through much anguish and despair. Isolated in a cast and bedridden, she begins to paint. She finds the courage to live in her art.

Feeling better, Frida falls in love and marries her mentor, the muralist Diego Rivera, who is already a legend. Kahlo, who had been such a serious student and confident young woman, is suddenly completely dependent on her husband, painting almost exclusively for him for many years. Their marriage is often painful for Frida because of Diego's extramarital affairs. She responds with her own romantic adventures. In her art, she uses bodily wounds to convey psychic injury - the greater the pain, the bloodier her paintings. Because Frida paints with the same bold courage that helped her to survive after her accident, her strength and determination in the midst of her struggle transforms her into a fine artist.

At first, Diego's work dwarfs the scale of Frida's paintings. Slowly, with much endurance, she rises out of that shadow as her own work begins to garner recognition. Her paintings often show herself, alone or with Diego, and reflect her suffering and her ecstasy. When she is at work, she channels her pain away from conscious thought and into the passion of her work. Throughout her life she has multiple surgeries and is never free of pain. In 1953, on the date of Frida's only one-woman show in Mexico, her doctor tells her she is too sick to attend it. But she has her bed lifted into a flat-bed truck and carried to the gallery.

Both Frida and Diego eventually demonstrate emotional endurance and a willingness to discover who the other person is, as well as their own true identity. When the film ends with Frida's death, the impression remains that despite the many crises in her life, she never lost her passion, remained full of courage to be who she was, and to take life as it came, including her suffering.

Cinema Alchemy

My client, Fran, had made much progress in her therapy. Her depression had lifted, and we started discussing termination. During this time, she arrived at a session very distraught. Unexpectedly, she had been laid off from her job, because her employer was downsizing. Fran did not like her work, but was very attached to her co-workers. Leaving her workplace very upset, she caused a car accident in which she was lightly injured. These unfortunate events triggered much self-criticism about causing the accident, grief about losing her co-workers, and about her temporary loss of health.

First I used cognitive restructuring techniques to work with Fran's self-doubts. Then I explained the grief process. Fran could not imagine ever "coming out at the other end". At this point, I suggested she watch the movie Frida with conscious awareness (for a description of this process, see http://www.cinematherapy.com/watching.html). I encouraged my client to "step into Frida's shoes" when she watched the film at home.

The movie touched Fran deeply and served as a catalyst for her therapeutic process. Aided by the emotional impact of the film and the "modeling" provided by Frida Kahlo, I guided Fran through the five steps to transformation through grief or disappointment that are outlined below.

As a result of this work, Fran was able to acknowledge and therefore consciously move through her grief process. Subsequently, she started seeing new possibilities for herself.   My client gained her confidence back and rediscovered a passion for photography. She had been trained in this field but had never been able to apply her skills. Like Kahlo, she started expressing her emotional pain in art. By the time her emotional and physical injuries were healed, she found work that allowed her to integrate her skills in photography.

Theoretical Contemplation and Guidelines;

Biographically inspired movies frequently have a more powerful impact on the viewer than those that are based on a fantasy screenplay. Fran felt deeply touched by Frida , because she identified with the historical figure whom she perceived behind the film character.  

I guided her through the following five steps of transformation through grief or disappointment:

1. Accepting emotions and limitations:

In order to heal, grieving clients need to first admit to themselves that they are wounded. Their loss confronts them with unexpected limitations. Through questioning, I guide a client to the parts of the movie where a character faces the same challenge.

Frida, for example, surrenders when she becomes bedridden for a long time. Paradoxically, the seed for the grieving persons' strength and hope lie in the acceptance of their limitations. Through this acceptance, they develop a fuller self.

2. Embracing emotional pain in a compassionate way:

For some clients, grieving comes naturally. But for others, grief is like a strange and frightening landscape, seldom if ever visited. In either case, watching a movie, in which a character grieves, can serves as a catalyst. If clients watch this kind of film with conscious awareness and reflect on their experience in a subsequent session, the movie viewing experience supports their own grieving process.   First, watching the film helps dissolve blocked up emotions and consequently aids clients in exploring their grief with compassion.

Fran, for example, empathized with Frida's emotional and physical pain. First, this helped her get in touch with her own emotions. Then, my client's compassion for the movie character helped her embrace her own pain in a compassionate way.

3. Small acts of courage despite fear:

When fear starts paralyzing the spirit, small courageous acts can start to put clients back in control of their lives.

Useful questions: Did you see a character show some small acts of courage despite his or her fear? Have you yourself done this in the past? Describe how you felt and how it helped you prevail.

4. Determination and Endurance:

Ironically, it is the very process of responding with determination to each element in our clients' struggle that nourishes hope. They need to face the exhaustion struggle brings and not give in to the thing that defeated them. Endurance eventually will kindle a glimmer of hope in the darkness and make transformation imperative.

Appropriate questions: Did you see examples in the movie that show how determination and endurance helped certain characters become stronger? Have you experienced this in the past? Describe your experience and how it could apply to your current situation.

6.Transformation:

In this stage clients understand that their struggle with loss and disappointment can scar them, but it can revitalize them as well. An emptiness they feel inside, created by the loss, needs to be filled with something valuable. Out of all this can come new strength, a new sense of self, and a new sense of purpose in their lives. There are some parts of the human character that are best honed under tension.

Helpful questions: Did you see examples in the film that illustrate this kind of transformation? Have you experienced this yourself in the past? Describe your experience and how it could apply to your current situation and potential future.

Birgit Wolz wrote the following continuing education online courses;

Cinema Therapy - Using the Power of Movies In the Therapeutic Process, which guides the reader through the basic principles of Cinema Therapy.

Cinema Therapy with Children and Adolescents - This course teaches Cinema Therapy with young clients. It includes numerous movie suggestions, which are categorized according to age and issues. It serves therapists, teachers, and parents.

Positive Psychology and the Movies: Transformational Effects of Movies through Positive Cinema Therapy - This course teaches how to develop clinical interventions by using films effectively in combination with positive psychotherapy. It serves for mental health practitioners and anybody who is interested in personal growth and emotional healing.

Therapeutic Ethics in the Movies - What Films Can Teach Psychotherapists About Ethics and Boundaries in Therapy, which covers: confidentiality, self-disclosure, touch, dual relationships and out-of-office experiences (i.e., home visits, in-vivo exposures, attending a wedding, incidental encounters, etc.)

Boundaries and the Movies - Learning about Therapeutic Boundaries through the Movies, which covers informed consent, gifts, home office, clothing, language, humor and silence, proximity and distance between therapist and client, and, finally, sexual relations between therapist and client.

DSM: Diagnoses Seen in Movies - Using Movies to Understand Common DSM Diagnoses.

Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM) - A New Approach to Diagnosis in Psychotherapy