Jung Journal Culture & Psyche
ISSN: 1934-2039 (Print) 1934-2047 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujun20
Auteur Film Directors as Contemporary Shamans
Cathleen Rountree Ph.D.
To cite this article: Cathleen Rountree Ph.D. (2008) Auteur Film Directors as Contemporary Shamans, Jung Journal, 2:2, 123-134, DOI: 10.1525/jung.2008.2.2.123 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1525/jung.2008.2.2.123
Published online: 01 Feb 2013.
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into and a means of arming other realities. Auteur Film Directors When using the medium of film to shift attention from a consensus reality, directors as Contemporary as shamans expand their consciousness and the consciousness of their community by o ering Shamans blueprints for spiritual development. Jacques Maritain describes this process of creative intuition as e imagination is not a state: it is the Human Existence itself. [ e] soul spiritual unconscious, [which] plays —William Blake (Bachelard 1988) an essential part in the genesis of poetry [art] and poetic inspiration. us a place is prepared You are a paje [shaman] like me. in the highest parts of the soul, in the primeval —An Amazonian shaman to director trans-lucid night where intelligence stirs the John Boorman, during the lming of images under the light of the Illuminating Emerald Forest (1985) Intellect, for the separate Muse of Plato to descend into man, and dwell within him, and become a part of our spiritual organism. e Divine Lineage (1955, 74)
God teaches us through mo ies. Maritain further expounds on the meaning —Arturo Ripstein (1997) of the Illuminating Intellect as a “spiritual sun ceaselessly radiating, which activates everything e practices of shamanism and lmmaking in intelligence, and whose light causes all our require a high level of sensitivity to maintain ideas to arise in us.” is phenomenon he calls contact with the spirit or invisible world—the “the birth of ideas.” However, he adds, this world of inner vision. Both lmmakers and profound occurrence happens beyond the area shamans need a heightened accessibility and of our awareness, for it remains “unconscious or responsiveness to the inner landscape of the scarcely perceived in the process, at least for the self as well as to the physical and emotional most part.” He elucidates that this is a process of cartography that surrounds them. Like shamans, illuminating “these very images, without which most filmmakers have enhanced powers of there is no thought” (73). Hence, it is a small seeing, hearing, and dreaming, and move easily step to say that the unconscious Illuminating between di erent realities without experiencing Intelligence contains, organizes, and conducts the boundaries to which many of us habituate images, which in turn, are the source of all ourselves. eir e orts are remarkable, even creative and artistic acts and accomplishments. heroic. And, as they have developed their talents Like Prometheus, the mythic Greek god who and cra , a world unlike any other (literature, brought fire to humanity, shamans were painting, sculpture, or photography) has been considered re-bringers. And each lmmaker extended to us, the viewer/participant. (for instance, the inventors of cinema itself, Shamanism does not rely on a belief or the “Lumiere” Brothers) has the ability to be adherence to any doctrine. In the hands of like Apollo—a god of light—or like Lucifer— creative and technically skilled lmmakers, the a fallen bearer of light, a demon of shadow value of shamanism can become an entry point and darkness.
, 2008, . 2, NO. 2, 123–134 123
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e connection between the archaic disci- Still, most modern auteur filmmakers, like pline of shamanism and the modern art form shamans, are engaged in their work because of cinema spans great distances in time and of the redemptive power of imagination itself. differences in cultures, but the functional As Oliver Stone suggests: similarities between these two are striking and The act of imagination, the act of seeing signi cant. Largely unconscious, spontaneously beyond yourself, stepping outside your produced parallels between various symbols ordinary, small, mundane life, living a larger and images have been and are currently utilized life through [movies]—that can only help you by both worldviews. Each, shamanism and in your everyday life. . . . If you can preserve the cinema, shapes reality through a form of ritual. imagination, it’s a wonderful thing. It will make As Jung observes, “ e primitive mentality your life so much more joyous, less painful. . . . It does not in ent myths, it experiences them” was the retreat to a walled world, an imaginative (1980, CW 91, ¶261). world, that allowed me escape and freedom. e primary functions of the shaman are (Breskin 1992, 22) that of healer and seer, and as such, he or she is able to foretell a future outcome well before it Auteur Directors as Wounded surfaces; the primary sense of the lmmaker is Healers that of vision or, to use Maritain’s expression, an “Illuminating Intellect,” and lms o en are . . . happy people never make phantasies, only disconcertingly prescient. A director thinks in unsatisfied ones. Unsatisfied wishes are the pictures, hence Wolfgang Giegerich’s statement, driving power behind phantasies; every separate “Image is thought represented in form” (1998, phantasy contains the ful llment of a wish, and improves on unsatisfactory reality. 114). e shaman’s vision is primarily an “inner” —Sigmund Freud (1961) one and her or his “seeing/healing” cures both internal and external injuries (psychological As a counterpoint to Freud’s notion of an and physical). By analogy, the alchemical individual’s need to “improve on unsatisfactory lmmaker heals wounds of the mind, heart, reality,” Jung developed his notion of “active soul, and body. Witness Norman Cousin’s imagination”—a place between consciousness theory in his book Anatomy of an Illness as and unconsciousness in which we consciously Perceived by the Patient: Re ections on Healing attempt to contact and dialogue with imaginal and Regeneration, that the laughter induced by gures and concepts that o er insights into watching comedies such as Laurel and Hardy unconscious behavior and states of being. Mary and the Marx Brothers helped cure his cancer Watkins, author of Waking Dreams, describes (1979, 39). this process as “the spontaneous movement of e healing that takes place communally thoughts and images [that] begin to emerge (through a process of initiation, transformation, into awareness” (2000, 222). The path to and enlightenment of self and community) artistic self-knowledge and understanding begins with each individual—from the encompasses both Freud’s “phantasies” and screenwriter to the director to the actor to the Jung’s active imagination. spectator. As in the shaman’s cave, in the cinema Many directors pursue their art form because we discover a concordance between lm itself they cultivate seeking their own know-ledge as a and our human metabolism. Even if a movie form of pleasure, as in Aristotle’s notion of “art as seems totally lacking in any higher purpose, the learning and the notion of learning as pleasure” relaxation factor of “entertainment” alone can (1981, 295). Others may unconsciously attempt be construed as an opportunity to forget our to heal themselves from traumatic childhoods or troubles, which in itself is a form of “healing.” other inter- or intrapersonal diculties. ese
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formative experiences shape the way a person feel the loneliness and ostracism of starting thinks and imagines; they become part of one’s over with yet another new group of children, psychic DNA, as it were. who could be particularly withholding from, Freud’s quote at the beginning of this even cruel to, newcomers. In addition to seeing section directly links a fantasy life to a means himself as “gangly and homely, and cursed of escape from an unhappy existence. Jung’s by an oversized lower lip” (and disliking his “active imagination,” a state of conscious name because he thought it was a girl’s name), reverie, takes fantasies to a deeper level Coppola felt a longstanding sibling rivalry with through many directors’ use of painting, his older brother, August, who was considered cartooning, music, puppeteering, and, of the prize in the family: handsome, intelligent, course, filmmaking. For examples of the and talented (Schumacher 1999, 7). ecacy of these theories, we will examine the Coppola was bedridden for the entire year childhoods of several directors: Francis Ford of 1949, during which time his imagination Coppola, who was bedridden with polio; became a cornucopia of expression. He described Martin Scorsese, who su ered from asthma; himself as “a lonely, ugly duckling, sad and sick French auteur, Francois Tru aut, who was and thinking” (Breskin 1992, 9). Many decades emotionally and physically abandoned by later, reecting on this period, he depicted it as his parents and became a juvenile delinquent a growing experience when he said: “I think (before movies “saved” his life); Swedish any tough time you go through any real crisis director, Ingmar Bergman, who su ered from where you break down, then survive, leaves you childhood neglect and abuse; and the above- in a far di erent place from where you were. . . . referenced Oliver Stone, a veteran of the generally,” he said, “I feel that people who have Vietnam War, who experienced various forms been traumatized tend to develop levels and of physical and psychological woundings. All wrinkles that really add something to them” have undergone some manner of psychic and/ (Schumacher 1999, 9–10. Italics added). or bodily “dismemberment” and in shamanic He was isolated and quarantined from terms have become “wounded healers.” other children (“I lived in bed,” is how he Dismemberment is an expression used describes that year), and it was the television by shamans to characterize a time of severe set, the radio, the record player, a tape recorder, emotional crisis—which psychologically and a 16-mm movie projector that became resembles a neuro-physiological disorder— his companions and learning apparatus for a that a shaman undergoes in order to be future career that the “Illuminated Intellect” initiated and transformed into a healer was already setting in motion. A metaphoric and spokesperson for her or his tribe. antecedent to his later career as a lmmaker, We experience a similar initiation and aside from the obvious movie projector, were transformation as a “temporary tribe” in a the puppets he created for his amusement darkened movie theater. and companionship. Inventing stories and By the time Francis Ford Coppola was conversations were his rst escapades into stricken with polio at the age of nine, he already the art of managing his own unhappiness carried a profound sense of being an outsider. and loneliness—an attribute that every Because his father, the late noted composer, director depends upon in his dealings Carmine Coppola, went from city to city with others, whether actors, crew, studio seeking orchestral work, the family moved so executives, or audience. As it did for Ingmar o en that Coppola attended more than twenty- Bergman, puppetry a orded Coppola his rst four schools (Blake 2000, 178). e natural “rudimentary experiences with directing his outcome of this experience was to evermore own little stories” (Schumacher 1999, 10).
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Alfred Hitchcock once remarked that in [a] macho neighborhood . . . [the young “one’s early upbringing inuences a man’s life Scorsese] found in the movies a sense of and guides his instincts” (Blake 2000, 49). excitement and adventure denied to him in Without doubt, the imbuing of imaginal, reality” (Wakeman 1988, 28). devotional, and corporal elements that Martin In each of these accounts of directors’ Scorsese acquired from his Roman Catholic young lives, we have witnessed what Jung upbringing, functioned both as a principal called individuation, the process of coming source and foundation for his cinematic vision. into psychic balance by recognizing a sense e origin of Scorsese’s “break down” was also of one’s own unique individuality as well as a childhood illness: asthma and pleurisy, which one’s connection to the greater experience of caused him “acute physical and mental stress” human existence. According to Anthony Storr, ( ompson 1996, 54). As a child, he wanted “Individuation means parting company with to be a painter and taught himself to draw, but the crowd” (1983, 20). is isolation naturally he was also fascinated by lms. Scorsese grew accentuates the loneliness, the sense of oneself up in the Little Italy neighborhood on New as “other,” about which these directors speak. York City’s Lower East Side. And, although Similarly, since his early childhood, French he “rarely ventured outside,” the “short, frail, film director Francois Truffaut immersed and sickly momma’s boy” was o en taken to himself in the dream world of the cinema. the movies by his parents (Biskind 1998, 227). Movies played a significant tutorial, even As he recounts, because he was house-bound pivotal, role in his life, as they did for many with asthma, “they didn’t know what else to lm directors in their youth. It is not hyperbole do with me” (1996, 3). e enormous images, to say that from the age of about seven-years- which amazed him, became new material old and continuing throughout his life, for his drawings and made-up stories, as he movies served as his babysitters, best friends, sketched out his favorite sequences a er seeing confidantes, and teachers. One could even a movie. say that—just as books did for the fatherless e Scorsese family was the rst household illegitimate son, Jacob, in Mike van Diem’s on their block to purchase a television in 1948. lm Character (1997)—movies parented this Scorsese recalls the magnitude of inuence adolescent “truant.” They were emotional these movies had on him as a (unbeknownst surrogates, who “saw” him just as deliberately— to him) budding lm director. rough the and consciously—as he saw them. British and Italian lms that were repeatedly The cinematic gaze cradled this nascent shown on late-night television, he had the cineaste, enthralled him, and became his eyes. opportunity to study “the camera’s movements Celluloid magic transmitted hope to Tru aut— and the theatricality of the gestures by . . . actors and every other conceivable emotion—through . . . [and] about the relation of camera to music” its unique and endlessly variant ways of ( ompson 1996, 4). In addition, Scorsese’s perceiving the world. Movies and the “cinema “framed reality” was watching, through his situation”—the “cave,” the darkness, the stream bedroom window, as the neighborhood of projected light, the “presence” emitted by children played stickball in the street. only a dozen or three thousand other souls (in Even as a young child, Scorsese recognized the words of Arturo Ripstein) “taught” him the artistry in cinema. “The images, the about the human existential condition, about darkness of the clouds, the silhouettes against human drama, about story. Truffaut loved the hills, and the music,” he recalls thinking, movies. ey were his whole life and the only “what you’re noticing, I guess, is poetry” source of his pleasure as a neglected child. As (Biskind 1998, 227). As a “lonely outsider he displayed in his critical writings and lms
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only a few years later, his imagination and ingrained in him as a child—he once said senses were ignited and nourished by viewing about the making of one of his films: “I movies, illustrating Jean Cocteau’s maxim, “A wrote myself out of my fear of death in e child’s eyes register fast. Later he develops the Seventh Seal” (1962). His autobiographical lm” (Insdorf 1997, 18). 1983 film, Fanny and Alexander, provided In every country in the world, cinema is a another form of creative exorcism. It tells the “deliverer” of delight and delusions. “Cinema story of two young children in a rural Swedish cultivates people,” says a character in Iranian town in 1907, whose privileged, happy lives director Mohsen Mahkmalbaf ’s Once Upon a are disrupted when their mother marries a Time, Cinema (1991), a lm about the birth tormenting, cruel Lutheran pastor. of movies in Iran in 1907. And they certainly Creating their lms allows these directors, educated and cultivated the unconventional who have experienced a “dark night of the soul” Tru aut, who kept a journal of all the lms through physical, psychological, and spiritual he saw. “He would see favorite lms as many challenges, to repossess their “lost” souls, just as ten times, even memorizing the songs on as they assist us, the spectators, in reclaiming the soundtrack,” Tru aut biographer, Annette our own through a formed and shared imaginal Insdorf, writes (1997, 18). experience. Filmmaking (and viewing) can, In Les uartre Cents Coups ( e 400 Blows, therefore, be a method of reintegrating 1959), Tru aut’s rst feature-length lm, the fragmented elements in the mind-body-spirit glow from the screen of “unreality” reects complex. on the enraptured face of Antoine Doinel Auteur directors are interested in (portrayed by Jean-Pierre Leaud), the ctional transforming, enlightening, and o en healing to character who served as Tru aut’s alter ego over empower their audiences through the channel of the course of ve lms. is autobiographically an “alert consciousness,” a “condition in which based story of an unparented twelve-year-old, people are fully aware of their surroundings and who o en cuts school classes in order to attend are able to react fully with those surroundings” the cinemateque, represents that of every (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998, 13). is other child, woman, or man who nds refuge, aware consciousness is necessary for both a sanctuary, and asylum at the movies. voluntary movie audience and, as in the example Heinz Kohut, the post-Freudian psycho- of Plato’s cave, an imprisoned one. analyst, believes that empathy in and of itself An awakened consciousness has the ability cures—that “the experience of a prolonged to respond. is point is important because it empathic immersion [which surely happens addresses a fundamental principle of cinema: in movie theaters] is curative” (Strozier 2001, the inherent interactive nature of movies. 347). is psychological therapeutic translates Italian director Francesco Rosi believes that “my into both shamanic and cinematic restoration lms demand a little work from the audience, of the psyche as well. As Tru aut recalled, I ask them to cooperate with me. . . . I try to watching movies and talking about them have the public collaborate in my search for a “was the rst happy time of my life” (1994, possible truth. e public should not just be 4). is “empathic immersion” and “curative” passive spectators of a story that’s being told” process was Tru aut’s induction into shamanic (Georgakas and Rubenstein 1983, 128). healing and transformation, which, as an adult The root of respond is the Latinate auteur director, translated into cinematic respondere, which means to reply, to pledge, shamanism. to promise in return. The Middle English As for cinema’s healing a ect on Bergman— meaning is literally “to sing a responsory.” e in terms of dealing with the terror of death emotional response elicited by certain lms
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overwhelms and “moves” us with the sensation the latter of which contains all the previous to “sing” (even if silently or with tears) our forms (1998, 49). e duende has the power sentimental, perhaps passionate, reaction. to seize “not only the performer but also the For instance, a lm such as Lars von Trier’s audience, creating conditions where art can be Breaking the Waves ferries the viewer through understood spontaneously with little, if any a series of emotional interactions between two conscious e ort” (Clottes and Lewis-Williams protagonists, Beth and Jan, a young married 1998, ix). couple deeply in love, who must deal with And from where does the duende originate? an accident that renders Jan paralyzed from Lorca writes that artists “who have muses the neck down. We are swept away by Beth’s hear voices and do not know where they are alternately transcendent communication with coming from. ey come from the muse that the divine, her horror at Jan’s predicament, and encourages them and sometimes snacks on a descent into her sacri cial semi-prostitution them.” He continues: “ ere are neither maps to please him. e lm agitates, even harasses nor exercises to help us nd the duende. We only us, into responding, cooperating, and know that he burns the blood like a poultice of collaborating. It predicates our involvement broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects with, if not enjoyment of, the story. The all the sweet geometry we have learned, that visceral urgency of the lm’s circumstances he smashes styles, that he leans on human pain and visual images oblige a cathexis of response- with no consolation [ . . . ]” (1989, 50). ability, our ability to respond, to “sing” with Lorca is a poet, a er all, and his visceral compassion through the fullness of our descriptions of the artist’s subconscious senses, intelligence, memories, and emotions. creative processes have the familiar odor of As Christopher Hauke suggests: “Why not the “wounded healer’s” psychic lesions shared think of the lm director as the ‘God with a by both the auteur director and shaman. In very big imagination’: one that allows us to fact, according to Lorca, meaningful art is project our punier ones onto it with a view to impossible without anguish. “ e duende,” transformation and growth” (2000, 1). he says, “takes it upon himself to make us su er by means of a drama of living forms, and clears the stairways for an evasion of the surrounding e Shamanic Process reality” (1998, 59). of Filmmaking is is an apt description of “reel” movie life in that it has the ability to con scate an A painter paints to unload himself of feelings awareness of anything outside our umbilical and visions. connection to the action and emotion per- —Pablo Picasso (Maritain 1955) ceptible on the screen. And, through the psyche Filmmakers and shamans alike seem to possess of a skilled director, “reel” movie life sinks us what Federico Garcia Lorca called duende, or into the matrix of the collective unconscious, spirit, “an inexplicable power of attraction, where each hallucination, every revelation the ability on rare occasions, to send waves of has credence. Director Ingmar Bergman, emotion through those watching and listening who is both a martyred object of and ecstatic to them” (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1998, recipient of duende, writes, “No art goes ix). Lorca believes true artists are aware that beyond consciousness as lm does, straight “the duende [they are] pursuing has leaped into the soul” (1989, 73). But in his deeply straight from the Greek mysteries [and myths] disturbing and provocatively raw portrayals [ . . . ]” into their works of art, whether they be of the disintegrating psyche and tormented music, painting, poetry, dance, theater, or lm, human soul in such lms as rough a Glass
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Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), Persona Spanish language), we can easily substitute (1966), and e Hour of the Wolf (1968), he “poet” with “auteur director” who, “with is also in the service of duende. magical power . . . changes a girl into a lunar Shamanic lmmakers include those whose paralytic, or brings an adolescent blush to the work changes or shi s the consciousness of broken old man begging in the wineshop [ . . . ] the viewers of their lms and helps them to and he works continuously on the arms with see the world and their lives di erently. ese expressions that give birth to the dances of every filmmakers are “shamanic” because they age” (Rayner 1998, 53). It is the director whose intentionally (and unconsciously through “magical power” transforms our identities as it the service of duende) invest their work with revolutionizes our minds. numinous content. Numinosity represents a mysterious power, a divine entity, or spirit that may precipitate or include a religious or spiritual Filmmakers’’ Shamanic Tools experience. A numen could be an actual object . . . seeing through is a process of deliteralizing or entity, a place, or an atmosphere, all of which and a search for the imaginal in the heart of are elements in cinema. things by means of ideas, we should not assume A brilliant example of numinosity and that it is mainly intellectual or a work of intuitive duende is found in two of Australian director abstraction. Peter Weir’s many lms: Picnic at Hanging Rock —James Hillman (1992) (1975) and e Last Wave (1977). Both lms inhabit a landscape that is, in itself, a mysterious Like shamans, the genius of the auteur director, presence—indeed, a primary character, given his or her gi , is an enhanced power of seeing, that each site, respectively, is titular. e Rock hearing, and dreaming. He “sees-through,” or to and the Wa v e are, essentially, personi ed as they quote James Hollis, has a “phenomenological beckon various human characters to them. e encounter” with transcendent personal or tribal lm’s supernatural, enigmatic qualities hover in experience and moves easily between di erent the interstices between the bene cent and the realities (1995, 188). Film directors may be ominous, but ever in the sphere of the numinous. considered alternately tricksters, shapeshi ers, e numinous is a di erent “country,” another magicians, puppeteers, sorcerers, and because state of consciousness, apart from quotidian of their personal power and celebrity, gods. As concerns. tricksters, they have the ability to make us “see” A master transporter to numinous territory, and experience that which is intangible and Peter Weir conducts his audience into the does not actually exist on a physical plane. nether world, like Hermes guiding souls across Auteur lmmakers journey into nonordinary the River Styx. In an interview Weir says that states of awareness (even if unconscious of he consciously embarks on this task with that evolution) and experience emotional, “something approaching the hypnotic, that is, psychological, mental, and sometimes physical the rhythm of the lm lull[s] you into another descents, usually with support from only state and you begin to go with the lm and their close peers and small inner circle, and drop your expectations” (Rayner 1998, 53). generally without any experience of traditional Bergman, too, addresses this notion when, in shamanism. Instinctively, I believe, they have a lm interview, he says, “ e lifeline of lm is been looking for their shamanic roots through rhythm and breath” (Ingmar Bergman Makes the means of healing the self and society as a Film, 1962). they, quite spontaneously, use many of the When Lorca speaks of duende in the shaman’s tools: employing art, images, and masculine personal pronoun (inherent to the symbols as a “medium”; making visible the
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realm of the invisible; steeping their work It is dicult to surpass the elevating spirit in depth psychology; working within ritual of any Kieslowski lm, perhaps, especially the and ceremony; serving as bridges for crossing enormously accomplished and beautiful Trois between metaphysical provinces; providing Couleurs: Bleu. e story is about a woman ladders for ascending to the upper world and (Juliette Binoche) who spends most of the descending to the underworld. screen time passively grieving for her dead Both shamans and film directors use husband and incrementally emerging from sound and music as a way of inducing the interstices of the living and the dead to a heightened emotional or psychological renewed sense of liberty and, if not optimism, states of consciousness that are capable of at least hopefulness. At the extreme human transporting the viewer to di erent locations condition is Pasolini whose lms are weighted and periods as well as to invisible realms. with gravity and decadence. And, yet, even Witness Bernard Hermann’s piercing score lms like Teorema and Medea stream with an for Hitchcock’s Psycho and his restless, even undercurrent of poetic ecstasy and an almost obsessive score for Hitchcock’s Vertigo; Angelo romanticized humanity. Pasolini’s underworld Badalamenti’s elegant but creepy scores for all is dangerous and damaged, yet compassionate of David Lynch’s lms (especially Blue Vel et, and soulful. Mulholland Drive, and the television series, Shamanic techniques offer essentially Twin Peaks); Nino Rota’s carnivalesque scores nondestructive means for film directors to for all of Fellini’s lms (especially La Dolce Vita, invite visions of “transcendental insight” and Juliet of the Spirits, and Amarcord); Zbigniew gain knowledge about themselves as they give Preisner’s hauntingly elegiac scores for all of it form and bring it forth into the province of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s lms (especially, e visibility and thus to engagement with the social Double Life of Veronique, Blue, and Red); Toru whole. Works of art evolving from these visions Takemitsu’s alternately screeching and melodic (impelled by “ine able inspiration”) continue to scores for Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara), nourish their audiences: Kurosawa’s Ikiru, 1954; Dodes’kaden (Kurosawa), and Empire of Passion Fellini’s La Strada, 1954 and 8 1/2, 1963; Ozu’s (Oshima). Some directors, however, prefer to Late Spring, 1949; Bunuel’s Nazarín, 1958; use long-standing contemporary songs that Bergman’s Winter Light, 1963; Chaplin’s contain already established associations for City Lights, 1931; Truffaut’s The Green the audience for their soundtracks. Woody Room, 1978; Bresson’s Diary of a Country Allen (Manhattan, Radio Days, and Sweet and Priest, 1950, and Au hasard Balthazar, 1966; Lowdown), Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the In uence, Goodfellas, and Casino), and Oliver Stone 1974; Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, 1996, and (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Any e Wind Will Carry Us, 2000; Kieslowski’s Given Sunday) come to mind. Decalogue, 1988, and The Double Life of A few examples of auteurs whose lms pilot Veronique, 1991; Ray’s Apu Trilogy, 1952– the spectator-participant to the regions of the 1959; Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, 1992; Erice’s transcendent are Krzysztof Kieslowski, Francois Spirit of the Beehive, 1973; Herzog’s Mystery Tru aut, Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiarostami, and of Kaspar Hauser, 1974; and Wenders’ Wings Steven Spielberg. ose directors who usher of Desire, 1988. Surely these lms operate on their audience downward to a dark, often all levels of consciousness: the personal and dismal emotional underworld of pain and collective conscious, as well as the personal despair are Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pier and collective unconscious. Paolo Pasolini, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, e opportunity for lmmakers to make and Nicholas Roeg. positive contributions to society may also
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eliminate their own feelings of alienation and rst French lmmakers, Georges Mèliés, was exclusion. Oliver Stone recalls that as a child a known “magician,” a conjurer, who lled his he “always felt like an outsider. . . . [It’s] just a shorts with tricks and sleights-of-hand that quality of one’s character. It’s an existence, an dazzled French viewers from all walks of life. anguish that you have” (Breskin 1992, 104). Eliade inadvertently links what I call “the Later he remarks that “the world of the cinema of redemption”—films that speak imagination” and movies were “a sanctuary to the issues of initiation, transition, and from real life. . . . I loved being in the dark, and transformation—to shamanism when he seeing movies” (105). A curious psychological suggests, “discoveries and contacts must be paradox emerges here in Stone’s account: On a extended through dialogues. But to be genuine subliminal level of unconsciousness, as we sit and fruitful, a dialogue cannot be limited to in a darkened movie theater and are ingested empirical and utilitarian language.” For Eliade, by “shadow,” we forget “reality.” Conversely, “A true dialogue must deal with the central values it is because we are in shadow that we are in the cultures of the participants” (1974, 96). baptized by the “light” of the ine able, the rough the medium of cinema, shamanic illumination of consciousness. One precedes, lmmakers have become a means for this “true even necessitates, the other. dialogue.” Cinema is not solely one-directional; As such, movies provide a primordial exchange is an inherent component. The mirror or graphic illustration of human, divine, gaze extends both ways and dialogue occurs and demonic expression and become a source somewhere in between. As exemplified in of scholarship, devotion, and redemption. Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. and Allen’s e Purple Essentially, cinema is an alchemical cauldron Rose of Cairo, lms look back and judge us as for psychological and spiritual transformation. much as we judge them. As willing participants who are immersed Bergman speaks to this idea of reciprocity in this cauldron, we shi from unknowing between a lm and its spectator when, during to understanding, from disconnection to a 1962 interview, Ingmar Bergman Makes a compassion. is alchemical process is utilized Film, he describes that a lm begins to take on a by directors, psychologists, and shamans as, each “real life, the moment [it] meets the audience”. in their own way, can either renew, reform, and He continues by saying, “I don’t think a lm restore souls, or, conversely, distort, disease, and becomes a lm until it has encountered the disrupt them. audience. It’s still only a partially finished product. e work isn’t born until that strange and terrible moment of encounter.” Bergman Cinema of Redemption believes that a director perceives his or her work as “incomplete and unprotected until it’s Since the beginning of the century, ethnologists surrounded by the consciousness of the audience.” have fallen into the habit of using the terms His use of the terms born and unprotected bear “shaman,” “medicine man,” “sorcerer,” and the sense of a lm as a breathing sentient being, “magician” inter-changeably to designate certain as well as indicating the concern of a paternal individuals possessing magico-religious powers. gure for a beloved child. —Mircea Eliade (1974) Filmmaking is a process of directors— Ever since the cinema was rst developed at the much like shamans—excavating their own beginning of the century, both lm historians and the entirety of humanity’s memories and and critics have used terms similar to those unprocessed emotions through particular used by Eliade to de ne directors of moving stories, locales, and characters. By means of a pictures. In fact, as early as 1895, one of the procedure both methodical and magical, this
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vulnerable emotive material is systemically experience and even our way of perceiving transposed onto the films they create. The reality. In addition, cinema is an existential ritual of viewing lms created by shamanic potential in the present that, through sacred directors can be a profoundly transforming, action, communicates this potential to and even transcendent, experience. makes participants of all world spectators. For instance, in a post- lm experience, we omas Edison, one of the inventors of can witness in the expressions on viewers’ faces motion pictures, said, “I had some glowing as they exit the dark initiatory space of the dreams about what the camera could be theater that they have been the bene ciaries made to do and ought to do in teaching the of a cinematic transmission. e world they world things it needed to know—teaching it reenter on the street seems less authentic than in a more vivid, direct way” (Putnam 1998, the threshold they crossed into movie life. e 13). e sources of this “teaching” are the reel and the real have been transposed. It is as contemporary shamanic lm directors. if they are encased in a transparent bubble: Everything external to that ephemeron is in slow motion and detached from signi cance. Aristotle. 1981. Trans. In trance, their eyes remain inaccessible. ey Aristotle’s Poetics, Leon Golden. Commentary by O. B. have experienced a tremendous mystical Hardison, Jr. Tallahassee: Florida State resonance in the lm world they were initiated University Press. into and are now exiting. Bachelard, Gaston. 1988. On Poetic Imagi- ree components, as practiced by shamans nation and Reverie. Trans. Colette and exercised by film directors—transfor- Gaudin. Dallas: Spring Publications, mation, consciousness, and imagination— 1998. all merge during the ineffable encounter Bergman, Ingmar. 1989. e Magic Lantern: between a human soul and a moving picture. An Autobiography. Trans. Joan Tate. These pictures do indeed “move” the viewer New York: Penguin. emotionally and transport him or her to the Biskind, Peter. 1998. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ mundus imaginalis. It is here that image, language, Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New movement, and sound merge to generate what York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. David Denby calls, “a ush of emotion” in an Blake, Richard A. 2000. Aer Image: e experience that is “the opposite of escape; it is . . . Indelible Catholic Imagination of Six an absolute engagement” (2007, 56). American Filmmakers. Chicago: Loyola The connections between the ancient Press. concept of shaman and the contemporary Boorman, John. 1985. Money into Light: A auteur lm director are indeed both broad Diary. London: Faber and Faber. and specific. Auteur film directors, like Breskin, David. 1992. Inner Views: Film- their predecessors, psychoanalysts and makers in Con ersation. New York: Da psychologists, in addition to being artists, Capo Press. Clottes, Jean and David Lewis-Williams. storytellers, and mythmakers, are shamanic 1998. e Shamans of Prehistory: magicians, medicine men and women, priests, Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. tricksters, conjurers, shapeshi ers, wounded New York: Henry N. Abrams. healers, soul-retrievers, and metaphysicians. Cousins, Norman. 1979. Anatomy of an Illness. e implication is that shamanic directors New York: Norton. and their product—movies—metaphorically Denby, David. 2007. “Big Pictures: Holly- and literally “hunt” for magic, for meaning, wood Looks for a Future. New Yorker, for a method of transforming our immediate January 8.
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Eliade, Mircea. 1974. Shamanism: Archaic Tru aut, Francois. 1994. e Films in My Techniques of Ecstasy. Trans. Willard R. Life. New York: Da Capo Press. Tra sk . Princeton: Princeton University Wakeman, John, ed. 1988. World Film Direc- Press/Bolligen Series LXXVI. tors: Volume Two, 1945–1985. New Freud, Sigmund. 1961. On Creativity and York: H.W. Wilson. the Unconscious. Trans. and ed. James Watkins, Mary. 2000. “Depth Psychology Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton. and the Liberation of Being.” In Path- Georgakas, Dan and Lenny Rubenstein, eds. ways into the Jungian World. Ed. Roger 1983. e Cineaste Interviews on the Art Brooke. London: Routledge. and Politics of the Cinema. Chicago: Lake View Press. , .., is a lm Giegerich, Wolfgang. 1998. e Soul’s Logical journalist and critic, educator, and author Life. New York: Peter Lang. of nine books, including e Mo ie Lo ers’ Hillman, James. 1992. Re-Visioning Psychology. Club, which explores the process of creating New York: Harper Perennial. community through lm discussion groups; Hollis, James. 1995. Tracking the Gods: e e Writer’s Mentor: A Guide to Putting Place of Myth in Modern Life. Toronto: Passion on Paper; and the ve-volume series Inner City Books. on women’s life stages, On Women Turning Ingmar Bergman Makes a Film. 1962. 30, 40, 50, 60, & 70. She is a contributing Directed by Vilgot Sjöman. editor to Documentary magazine and covers Insdorf, Annette. 1997. Francois Truaut. New lm festivals and writes extensively about York: Cambridge University Press. lms and directors for print and online Hauke, Chris and Ian Allister. 2001. Jung and publications. Her lm columns appear Film: Post Jungian Takes on the Mo ing exclusively in e Santa Cruz Sentinel and Image. Hove, UK and Philadelphia: Jung Journal. An active public lecturer and Brunner-Routledge. educator, she has taught writing, lm studies, Jung, C.G. 1980. “ e Psychology of the women’s studies, and multicultural studies Child Archetype,” CW 91, ¶261. for sixteen years at U. C. Santa Cruz. Her blog Lorca, Federico Garcia. 1998. In Search of at www.WomeninWorldCinema.org closely Duende. New York: New Directions. follows global women’s issues as addressed in Maritain, Jacques. 1955. Creative Intuition lms. Correspondence: 304 Bowsprit Drive, in Art and Poetry. New York: Meridian Aptos, CA 95003, www.themovieloversclub. Books. com; [email protected]. Putnam, David. 1998. Mo ies and Money. New York: Knopf. Rayner, Jonathan. 1998. e Films of Peter Weir. New York: Cassell. is essay illuminates and explicates the Ripstein, Arturo, Director. 1997. Divine/ElDivine/El author’s theory that auteur lm directors Evangelico de las maravillas. are contemporary embodiments of ancient, Schumacher, Michael. 1999. Francis Ford Cop- primitive shamans. ey are gures of the same pola: A Filmmaker’s Life. Ne w York : archetype but inhabit di erent eras, cultures, ree Rivers Press/Crown. and costumes. roughout history and cross- Storr, Anthony. 1983. e Essential Jung. culturally, the mythical role of shaman and Princeton: Princeton University Press. artist were inseparable. Shamans were, in fact, Strozier, Charles B. 2001. Heinz Kohut: e the most gi ed of artists who recorded their Making of a Psychoanalyst. New York: visions in poetry, song, painting, and drama. Farrar, Straus, Giroux. ey came to serve the functions of priest, ompson, David. 1996. Scorsese on Scorsese. doctor, psychotherapist, writer, actor, and, in Ed. Ian Christie. London: Faber and the twentieth century, auteur lm directors. Faber. From their invention during the 1890s,
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movies have served the mythic function of reestablishing for community members Auteur Cinema, Ingmar Bergman, cinema an ancient connection in the safety of a of redemption, cinematic shamanism, darkened, cave-like dwelling, which signi es contemplative cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, both tomb and womb. Every person in the depth psychology, Duende, lm, Sigmund theater unconsciously agrees to come together Freud, C.G. Jung, Heinz Kohut, Federico as a collective and share this particular life Garcia Lorca, magicians, movies, mundus experience. is essay also closely examines the imaginalis, Plato’s Cave, David Putnam, notion of the auteur director as a “wounded Martin Scorsese, Shamanism, Oliver Stone, healer” using the examples of Ingmar Bergman, tricksters, Francois Tru aut, the unconscious, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, wounded healers. Francois Tru aut, and Oliver Stone.
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