The Local

The protagonist, played by director Eberle, remains largely a mystery throughout the film, but despite near constant exposure to drugs, at almost every opportunity he asserts, "I'm clean." (0:25, 1:12, et al) Mostly he bounces around working as a drug dealer/courier for low wages, but ultimately he finds purpose in his last job of the film, to remove Claire, on her father's dime, from an apartment where Big Black keeps her supplied with heroin.
 
Anne, who claims to have been an "anesthesiologist," smokes an unspecified substance (marijuana?) with an unlikely appearing long stem pipe. (0:13, 0:25)

From time to time Eberle's character peers at a syringe he keeps in a cabinet in the boiler room where he lives. (0:15, 0:27)

Apparently because he knows what's in store for him after a deal goes bad Redcoat shoots himself with a pistol in his mouth. (0:20)

Blueboy tells a story of how he intended to "off myself," until, in attempting to save a baby from a fire, he finds reason to live. (0:56)

Big Black brings a syringe to Claire and injects her between the toes after drawing blood into the syringe. (1:07)


Big Black shakes a "mixture of speed and cocaine... called it spoke," then snorts the powder. (1:12)

Eberle's character tells Claire its time to get clean and injects her between her toes. (1:23) He drops the syringe and crushes it under his foot on the pavement. (1:24)

abstinence | addiction | heroin | suicide

Up

As the title implies this film contains numerous scenes counter-phobic for acrophobia.

Carl loses his wife and soul mate, Ellie.

acrophobia | Bereavement | counter-phobic

Six in Paris

Spoiler alert! (segment "Gare du Nord" by Jean Rouch)

I have seen hundreds of suicides in films, but this may be the only one for which there is no explanation. After an argument with her husband Jean-Pierre, Odile angrily leaves their apartment. After a stranger barely avoids striking her with his car he follows her, apparently taken with her, and tells her he wanted to die until he met her. When she resists his advances he tells her he will count to ten. But when she still turns him down he goes off camera, Odile looks over the side of the bridge, screams, and we see his lifeless body among the railroad tracks below.

suicide

Running On the Sun

New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson talks of how his oldest brother, a "great runner and cyclist had taken his own life," helping motivate him to run in the Badwater 135. (0:09)

suicide

ReGENERATION

ReGENERATION | Facebook

From the world premiere of this documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival. (Times are approximate.) As of the time of this post the film is making the rounds of film festivals, but with no definite plans for theaters, DVD's, or streaming.

References to the self-esteem movement: The "me generation" (0:10); "Selfish" (0:12)

Psychologist Jean Twenga, Ph.D. talks about "putting yourself first." (0:13)

John Bellamy Foster (?): People are "told to be narcissistic." (0:15)

Reference to "the ADD generation" (0:20)

Under other governments if you "speak back against the government they put you in a mental asylum." (0:32)

narcissism | psychologist | self-esteem

Loving

Brooks, drunk (as he is during much of the film), proposes an art show of works by "just the guys who committed suicide." (0:32)

When Selma confronts Brooks about his drinking, he says, "Give me a gun and I'll kill myself." She asks if he has ever heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. (0:40)

alcohol intoxication | Alcoholics Anonymous | alcoholism | suicide

Angels and Demons

#angelsanddemons

Spoiler alert!

When the Camerlengo realizes the Cardinals have uncovered his evil plot he douses himself with lamp oil and sets himself afire. (2:13)

suicide

Women in Trouble

On her cell phone Doris talks about 13 year old Charlotte with Doris' sister, Addie: "She's gonna be in therapy for this for years, guaranteed. Different therapist, that's all." (0:06)

Charlotte in a psychotherapy session with Maxine, Charlotte's (and Addie's) psychotherapist (0:09):
Showing Maxine a chain necklace, Charlotte says, "It's what I use to hypnotize people. Sometimes I see things... You want me to hypnotize you?... You're Addie - my mom's - therapist"
Maxine: "Your therapist too, right?" (0:11)
Charlotte: "I think you're so caught up in saying what you think people need to hear you can't see what's right in front of your face."
Charlotte: "Your husband and my mom are having an affair." [Should we refer to that as a boundary violation even though Maxine was not responsible? Might this have been avoided if Maxine had used a family approach, seeing Charlotte and Addie together, or did Charlotte need individual sessions?]
Maxine: "Your mom tells you what we discuss in our sessions?" (0:13)

Nick Chapel to flight attendant Cora: "drop some ecstasy" (0:22)

Panicked Cora breathing in a paper bag (0:28)

Trapped together in a stuck elevator Doris says to Electra, "I'm not hysterical. I'm claustrophobic." Electra replies, "I'm afraid of heights." Doris: "And I'm afraid of falling." (0:31)

Bartender Rita to Bambi: "He's got Tourette's" (0:34)

Back on the elevator:
Doris tells Electra: "I loved him so much I didn't even realize I had a meth problem." (0:40)
Doris tells Electra about Charlotte and Addie: "They're both in therapy now" 
Electra tells Doris,  "I went to therapy once. Didn't do much for me. Just some creep gettin' off on comparing me to dog sh*t stuck to the bottom of a shoe... He worked in metaphors." (0:43)
Electra about her roommate: "(Coke might've helped with that...) Then one day Riley locks herself in a hotel room and blows her brains out." (0:45)

After a series of psychotherapy patients talking about their problems, (0:47) Maxine, who had passed out from drinking, awakens from a dream. (0:47)

Travis asks Maxine, "Need something to help you sleep?" (0:55)

Mistakenly thinking her patient Addie has called on Travis' phone, Maxine berates the caller who is in fact an emergency worker who tells her Addie has been injure in a motor vehicle accident. (0:56)

Darby tells Holly, "She gave you a couple Valium, so that's probably what you're feeling right now." (0:57)

Darby about Holly: "I think the Valium didn't sit well." (1:07)

Electra to Doris "I've had my amphetamine phase, my coke phase, ..." (1:21)

boundaries | claustrophobia | diazepam | hypnosis | psychotherapist | psychotherapy | suicide

Kotch

Kotch likes to talk, and often, as Wilma says (0:13), "he goes off on some crazy tangent." (0:04, 0:09, 0:11, 0:12) Or would circumstantial better describe his talk, and how might we assure ourselves that his thinking pattern does not stem from mental illness?

Kotch, seeming to appreciate the dangers of combining CNS depressant drugs, tells Gerald, as they collect Wilma's spilled medication off the kitchen floor: "I wouldn't take additional sedation... She shouldn't take another tranquilizer. She's had her Seconal tonight. Hasn't she had her tranquilizer? And you've been drinking at the party. (0:19)

Kotch talks about Wilma's mental state, referring to depression, nerves, paranoia. (0:32)

The retirement home director introduces Dr. McKernan, the "resident psychologist." (0:34) She administers to Kotch a variety of psychological instruments including a Rorschach, another projective test involving changing shapes of sand in liquid, a picture puzzle, and some standardized questions. (0:35)

Kotch asks Dr. Caudillo whether he has "put her [Erica] under sedation." (1:32)

circumstantial thinking | psychological testing | psychologist | secobarbital | sedative | tangential thinking

Vénus beauté (institut)

Angèle visits Samantha in her hospital bed after a suicide attempt by overdose with tranquilizers. (1:17)

Antoine's fiance, distraught over the end of their engagement, tells Angèle during a massage, "I want to die." (1:20)

overdose | suicide | sedative

Monsieur Ibrahim

Moses believes Ibrahim can read his mind. (0:15)

Moses talks about his father's apparent "all day" depression. (0:39)

Moses learns that his father's body has been found under a train, an apparent suicide. (0:54) He says, "Suicide is worse than abandoning your kid." (0:55)

depression | suicide | thought broadcasting

Brief Encounter

Laura, watching other people on the train, feels "as if they could read my secret thoughts." (0:33)

Laura, distraught and miserable over the apparent imminent end of her affair with Alec, says, "I want to die." (1:20) When she hears the express train approaching she runs to the platform intent on jumping in front of it, but she stops just in time. (1:23)

suicide | thought broadcasting

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Spoiler alert!

As the story unfolds we may wonder whether the death of the 16 year old son Martha and George describe to Honey and Nick might explain the emotional conflict in their marriage. Only near the end do we learn that they have never been able to have children.

Nick: "Honey had a hysterical pregnancy." (0:50)

George tells Martha, "I think I'll have you committed." (1:23)

All four characters drink almost continually throughout the film.

As a couples psychotherapist could you work with these two if they were still drinking? How might you intervene? Have Martha and George resolved any of their problems during the night? Maintaining a facade of normalcy in their marriage seems to depend on avoidance of toxic issues. Would helping them to discuss them likely pay off? Could George have had Martha committed at the time when the story is set?

Bereavement | heavy drinking | pseudocyesis

American Meth

This documentary focuses on epidemic use of methamphetamine in the western US, but contains no footage of using, dealing, or production of the drug. Val Kilmer, who starred in The Salton Sea, a film that touches on meth, narrates.

The Faces of Meth project of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office (0:07)

Review of history of the drug: First synthesis of amphetamine in Germany in 1887 by Lazar Edeleanu; first synthesis of methamphetamine by Akira Ogata in Japan in 1919; Adolf Hitler's use of the drug. The Benzedrine inhaler (which actually delivered racemic amphetamine, not methamphetamine, as implied by the narrator) (0:09)

Ingredients used in illicit production of methamphetamine (0:11)

The anti-meth media campaign in Montana (0:20)

Trial on charges related to meth (0:22)

Treatment of meth addiction (0:30)

"Meth mouth" (0:33)

A few days in the life of a family afflicted by methamphetamine addiction (0:38). Family history of addiction (0:43). Mom talks about her relationship with meth (0:45). The story ends with the familiy attempting a geographical cure. (1:01)

addiction | amphetamine | geographical cure | methamphetamine

Walk On Water

Eyal returns home from a successful mission to assassinate a terrorist and finds his wife Iris has killed herself and left him a note, the contents of which are not revealed until near the end. (0:06)

Eyal and Axel encounter a group of transvestites in the Berlin subway. (1:11)

Bereavement | cross-dressing | suicide | Transvestic Fetishism

My Own Private Idaho

The film opens with a view of the definition of narcolepsy on the page of a dictionary, and indeed throughout the film Mike experiences sleep attacks or cataplexy:

Sleep attack (0:03, 1:23, 1:36); associated with sex (0:14); amnesic for events immediately before (0:21); fearing approaching police officer (0:56); after fight with his brother (0:58)

Mike and Scott snort cocaine. (0:29, 0:30)

cataplexy | cocaine | Narcolepsy

The Porcelain Doll

This film deals with several aspects of loss and death, including allegory of the Christ myth. But in one story rather arrogant stranger drives into town and announces to the group of humble people there that they now own all of it.  ~0:28  a woman cries and talks about how she wishes her son, who died 5 years ago at the age of 12, could have lived to experience that moment. Before the stranger leaves he instructs the people to bring those who have died, implying that he may restore them to life when he returns a few days hence. The people exhume the miraculously well preserved bodies of their loved ones and await the stranger's return.

Bereavement

Boarding Gate

Multiple brief references to various, sometimes unidentified, drugs.

Packages of unidentified drugs removed from hiding places in furniture in a smuggling operation. (0:15)

Transfer of drugs. A man who turns out to be an agent taste tests a drug (heroin?). (1:17)

Sandra says, "Someone slipped some GHB in my beer... They were doing crystal." (0:40)

Someone had "taken ecstacy." (0:42)

"E" pills offered at a club. (1:25)

Sue may have sedated Sandra with an unidentified substance mixed into her drink. (1:27)

drug

Samurai Rebellion

Spoiler alert!

This film illustrates the unique role of suicide, as seppuku, in feudal Japan.

Isaburo and Yogaro may be allowed by the feudal lord to commit seppuku because of their defiance of his wishes related to Yogaro's wife Ichi. (1:02)

The feudal lord has ordered Yogaro and Isaburo to commit seppuku. (1:17)

Hoping to save Yogaro and Isaburo and avoid having to renounce them, Ichi kills herself with the spear of a guard. (1:38) Guards eventually kill grieving Yogaro as well, and Isaburo buries them both.

Bereavement | suicide

The Asylum

Spoiler alert!

Playing on psychiatric historical realities, probably best exemplified by the lobotomy, which this film does not mention, depicts a maverick psychiatrist's experiments gone awry. How many boundary violations can you count?

Rose awakens her sister Jenny from a flashback nightmare in which she sees herself stabbing her mother to death. (0:01)

In another nightmare Jenny sees herself jumping from the clock tower of the asylum after inmates taunt her to jump while orderlies tell her to stop. (0:02)

Jenny appears to be in a psychotherapy session in an office talking about her dreams, but then she addresses the psychotherapist as her father, approaches him from behind, starts to remove his coat, then backs off and apologizes. (0:03)

The father says he is a psychiatrist (Dr. Adams) who was in charge of a lunatic asylum, where the family lived. (0:09)

William, apparently a patient of Dr. Adams, arrives for his session, stopping first to talk to Jenny. (0:14)

Neville fumbles for a syringe next to an ash tray. Might he be looking for a heroin fix? (0:17)

Hoping to confirm or refute the material in her nightmares, Jenny enlists William to drive her to the asylum where she lived as a child. They see an old sign on the ground near the gate that reads, "Tawney Reach Mental Hospital." (0:19)

As she stands atop the fence (The gate was locked.) William exhorts Jenny to "jump," which seems to trigger another flashback. (0:20)

William toys with the old switchboard, pretending to administer shock therapy to himself with plugs at the ends of two cords. (0:21)

Inside the asylum Jenny finds a child's drawings depicting events like those from her dreams. (0:24)

A mob of inmates attacks Jenny in a dream. (0:37)

Isobella, a psychic, talks about how hearing voices has been an asset in her business, but she asserts, "I'm not insane." (0:53)

Father Matthew tells Jenny he was the asylum chaplain until he tried to kill himself. They discuss Jenny's dreams of jumping. (1:02)

Now in the asylum with Jenny, Neville finds and tries to inject an unidentified drug after wrapping a tourniquet around his arm. (1:06) Seeing this seems to trigger Jenny's recollection of a doctor injecting her with drugs as a child. (1:09)

Dr. Adams appears holding a knife. Dr. Adams injects Jenny with an unidentified drug and begins to operate an electrical panel apparently controlling movies, lights and sounds, suggesting that he is attempting to implant memories in her. (1:12)

Jenny, attempting to escape from her father, finds herself on the tower from her nightmares and again experiences a flashback of inmates and staff yelling at her from the ground. (1:24)

Dr. Adams rescues Jenny from falling and explains his experiments: "It was a time of great excitement about the possibility of healing minds with psychotronic [sic] drugs, hypnosis, recovered memory... We questioned whether there was such a thing as mental illness. Who says what is normal? ... combine these treatments with extrasensory perception... The closed-minded drones would have their mental horizons expanded." (1:26)

Dr. Adams drags Rose (Or is it the other way around?) off their perch, and they fall to their deaths. (1:33)

Bereavement | boundaries | electro-convulsive therapy | flashback | memory | Posttraumatic Stress Disorder | psychiatric hospital | psychiatrist | psychiatry | suicide

American Experience: The Lobotomist

This documentary outlines the career of Walter Freeman, MD, the most ardent proponent of lobotomy in the US, and his development of transorbital lobotomy, as alternatives to electroshock, insulin shock and Metrazol shock for treatment of some mental disorders.

Development of the procedure attributed to Egaz Moniz. (0:14)

Ellen Ionesco may have been the first person Freeman ever lobotomized using a transorbital approach.

Alice Hammett may have been the first person to undergo lobotomy in the U.S. (0:16)

Rose Kennedy becomes perhaps Freeman's most famous lobotomy patient. (0:23)

Discovery that chlorpromazine seems to address some of the same problems as lobotomy contributes rapidly to the demise of lobotomy. (0:44)

chlorpromazine | electro-convulsive therapy | Walter Freeman | insulin shock | lobotomy | Egaz Moniz | pentylenetetrazol | psycho-surgery