The Game

#thegame

Spoiler alert!

His brother Conrad tells banker Nicholas, "I used to buy crystal meth off the Maître d'."
Conrad: "How long has it been since Mom's funeral?"
Nicholas: "Not since family week at rehab."
Nicholas: "Are you still on medication?"
Conrad: "I'm not even seeing a shrink." (0:05)

A young boy sees someone standing on a roof. (0:09)
A man jumps from the roof. We later learn Nicholas watched his father jump to his death. (0:12) Flashbacks?

CRS worker Feingold hands Nicholas a clipboard:  "A couple of psych tests there, the MMPI and the PAP."
Nicholas reads a test item: "I sometimes hurt small animals. True or False." (0:15)

In another brief flashback Nicholas finds what appears to be a body, but is a manakin with the face of a clown. (0:25)

Senior news commentator Daniel Schorr converses with Nicholas from the television. How well might this portray ideas of reference associated with Schizophrenia. (0:26)

Shots of psychological tests using True - False items, videos and pictures. Nicholas wired to EEG. (0:17)

Close up of mirror with cocaine and razor blade. (0:57)

When Nicholas enters he finds his home crudely redecorated. Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) sings White Rabbit: "You've just had some kind of mushroom..." Nicholas reads a note: "Like my father before me I choose eternal sleep." (1:05)

Nicholas asks Conrad, "What are you on?" (1:10)

Nicholas asks domestic Ilsa, "What was my father like, Ilsa?"
Ilsa: "Nobody expected it." (apparently referring to his father's suicide) (1:17)

Waitress Christine tells Nicholas they used the psych info to steal money from him. (1:27)

Nicholas loses consciousness or is paralyzed, apparently drugged. (1:31)

Nicholas awakens in a coffin in a crypt in a cemetery in Mexico. (1:33)

A hotel manager tells Nicholas that Conrad suffered a nervous breakdown." (1:41)

Feingold in a television ad appears to talk to Nicholas who then finds a picture of him hanging on the wall in a restaurant. (1:43)

Believing he has killed Conrad, Nicholas appears to jump to his death. (1:55)

Conrad presents Nincholas with  a T-shirt: "I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico..." (1:57)

The film closes to Slick singing, "One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small..."

Compare this "corrective emotional experience" to psychotherapy.

Bereavement | corrective emotional experience | electroencephalogram | ideas of reference | MMPI | nervous breakdown | psychological testing | suicide