In May 2018 we chose a movie for you:

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

Directed by: Stephen Chbosky
Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller…
Year: 2012
Running time: 103 minutes

Plot:  This movie is an adaptation of an epistolary novel, written and directed by the novel’s author Stephen Chbosky. A young student, Charlie, has been suffering from clinical depression and has recently been discharged from a mental health care institution to begin his adaptation to a normal lifestyle as a young high school student.

When he starts attending school, he meets Sam and Patrick, who invite him to join several social activities. Charlie discloses to Sam that the year before his best friend committed suicide. The story is about the friendship among Sam, Patrick and Charlie, adolescence-related problems and difficulties facing topics such as bullying, friendship and love. After the release of film, Chbosky began to speak more openly concerning mental health care aspects. Producers are the same of Ghost World and Juno, which are both movies about struggling teenagers.

Stephen Chbosky, in a interview from the Guardian,
about mental health issues and why it’s important to talk about these topics:

“Before they are diagnosed, they are told these things. Even though there might not be stigma, they have been told to get over it for so long that they feel there must be something wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with them. They just have an illness that they need to treat, just like anyone would treat allergies or a cold.
It’s more complicated than that, obviously”.

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Sources: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perks_of_Being_a_Wallflower_(film)

In April 2018 we chose a movie for you:

“What Dreams May Come”

Directed by: Vincent Ward
Starring: Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr, Annabella Sciorra, Max von Sydow
Year: 1998
Running time: 113 minutes

Plot: The story is based on Richard Matheson’s novel and the title is from a line in Hamlet’s soliloquy “To be, or not to be”. It describes the love story between the pediatrician Chris Nielsen and the artist Annie Collins, who have to face the difficulties of grief after their children death. Later in the story Chris also dies in a car crash: Annie attempts to cope with his loss but she is wracked with guilt for the deaths of Chris and their children, believing that she was responsible for it, and she commits suicide. After his death, Chris awakens in “Heaven”, and unfortunately he learns that those who commit suicide go to “Hell”; this is not the result of a judgment made against them, but rather their own tendency to create “nightmare” afterlife worlds based on their pain. So Chris decided to start a journey, not without dangers, to rescue his wife.  

“…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful”.

Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

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Sources: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Dreams_May_Come_(film)

 

In March 2018 we chose a movie for you:

“The Sea Inside”

Directed by: Alejandro Amenábar
Starring: Javier Bardem
Year: 2004
Running time: 125 minutes

Plot: The movie is based on the true story of Ramón Sampedro, a man from Galicia (Spain), who, since 28 years, is quadriplegic as a consequence of an accident, and is bedridden. The movie focuses on his campaign for the right to end his own life. However, the real focus is life, as a priceless gift, through the characters we meet around Ramón’s bed (his family, the three women, a quadriplegic priest), beautiful landscapes and music. Life and love, in its deepest meaning, represented by two opposites: Manuela and Julia.

We selected this movie because of the current debate concerning euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The topic is the object of current debates involving the whole clinical community, and it has also been the focus of two intersection symposia organized by the EPA-SSSP together with the Old Age Psychiatry Section in 2017 in Florence, and in 2018 in Nice (click HERE for more details). In our opinion it effectively represents the complexity of this thematic, and offers a wide perspective about it, without focusing on a single viewpoint.

“Out to sea. Out to sea, and in the weightlessness of the deep where dreams come true, two souls unite to fulfill a single wish. Your gaze and mine, over and over like an echo, repeating silently: “Deeper, and deeper” beyond everything that is flesh and blood. But I always awaken and I always wish for death, my lips forever entangled in your hair”.

Ramón Sampedro

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Sources (image and contents): 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369702/

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Thanks to Raffaella Calati and Carla Gramaglia

In February 2018 we chose a movie for you:

“Dead Poets Society” 

Written by: Tom Schulman
Directed by:  Peter Weir
Starring:  Robin Williams
Year: 1989
Running time: 128’

Plot: The movie talks about a group of students attending the high school, the “Welton Academy” , an all-male, elite school. The teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) uses a quite particular teaching method: he encourages his students to make their lives extraordinary (“carpe diem”). One of these students, Neil, discovers his love for acting and gets the role in a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; anyway his father does not agree with his decisions. Professor Keating helps him to realize his potential becoming really important in Neil’s life. The night of the performance Neil’s father goes to see him performing his role on the stage, but then he obliges his son to be enrolled in a military academy. After this talk with his father, Neil eventually commits suicide.

We choose this movie because in this period many Tv Series talk about suicide between teenager population (we talk about this topic in our section Something to talk about in these suggestions: “TV Series & Suicide: The End Of The F****ing World & 13 Reasons Why“; “Echoes of the TV series “13 reasons why” release: an ongoing scientific debate“), and this about 20 years old movie present us an important topic of how can be difficult to relate with young’s problems.

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Sources: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Poets_Society
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6755817

In November 2017 we chose a movie for you:

“The Sea of Trees”

Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Written by: Chris Sparling
Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Ken Watanabe, Naomi Watts
Year: 2015
Running time: 106 min

Plot: Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) is an American man who decides to end his life after  his wife’s death (Naomi Watts), who was an alcoholic. Arthur goes to the Aokigahara forest, a famous suicide hotspot at the base of Mount Fuji, in Japan. In the forest he encounters a Japanese man, Takumi Nakamura (Ken Watanabe), who is there for Arthur’s same purpose. Together, they begin a journey of self-reflection and mutual help.

We propose this movie because it allows reflection about hotspots and implications for suicide prevention. For further information about hotspots, you can read also this month scientific suggestion at this link.

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Sources (text and image):  

Wikipedia, the sea of trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_of_Trees

In October 2017 we chose a movie for you:

“For One More Hour with You”

Directed by: Alina Marazzi

Year: 2002
Running time: 55 min

Plot: For One More Hour with You (“Un’ora sola ti vorrei”) is a documentary entirely focused on the life of the mother of the Director Alina Marazzi, Luisa (Liseli) Marazzi Hoepli, born in 1938 and dead for suicide in 1972, at 33, when Alina was 7. The documentary is Alina’s attempt to collect the pieces of her mother’s life. It is not possible to convey here the emotional patchwork of melodies (the film’s title is the one of an old Italian love song), home movies, and recordings that Alina selected to recreate pictures of her mother. Alina explains, presenting this documentary, that it is a gift to her mother, and to all children and parents.

We choose this movie because it well describes both Liseli’s psychache (borrowing the neologism coined by Shneidman in 1993) and the experience of a suicide survivor. The movie could represent an extraordinary example of how it is possible to survive to such a dramatic personal experience, the suicide of a mother, and to continue the elaboration of this loss with the help of the creative work.

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Sources (text and image):  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329468/?ref_=nm_knf_i4

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Thanks to Raffaella Calati, MD, PHD