Yesterday I watched David and Lisa on YouTube. The movie is from 1962 and is done in black and white, mainly without background music and at times the digitized version is hazy. while at other times it seemed as if the screen was shaking. I watched it on my computer in theater mode rather than full screen, because of the low resolution of the video. These glitches notwithstanding, I found it compelling. I had watched it on TV as a kid, perhaps more than once. I don't believe I had previously watched it as an adult. Below are some impressions from doing that.
Much of the story takes place at a high school for students who have profound psychoses. The students live at the school. The actual classes aren't part of the story. The time spent in social activity provides the focus. The school staff includes healthcare professionals who casually interact with the students. The head psychiatrist, played by Henry Da Silva, is notable for his low-keyed and gentle demeanor, which remains unwavering. His conversations with David are one of the features of the film. In these discussions David is skeptical and non-cooperative, at first. Eventually, David becomes trusting.
David is played by Keir Dullea, who also starred in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The character is very intense, quick to display anger at any provocation, yet also phobic and extremely frightened of death, so much so that he tries to protect his personal environment by not letting anyone touch him. He also seems to prefer a degree of formality, both in the way he talks and in the style he dresses, often wearing a jacket and tie, though later in the movie sometimes a sweater replaces the jacket, with the tie remaining. Presumably the formality is a vestige of his upbringing and that his parents, particularly his mother, cares a lot about appearances. Ultimately in the movie David finds fault with his parents for the superficial and dishonest way they interact with him. He runs away from home after that. The formality also conveys that David would be considered well educated and quite intelligent, at least as applied to abstract school subjects.
Lisa is played by Janet Margolin, a rising young actress in the 1960s. Facially, she is simultaneously beautiful and innocent, and her look makes it quite understandable for why David would fall for her. She speaks in rhyme of a sing-song variety, simplistic in some ways, yet quite on point as well. While others who don't penetrate Lisa's shell respond to her in normal speech, David soon figures out that to communicate with Lisa he must enter her world and respond in rhyme on the same subject that she brought up. This is effective.
I found myself sharing some characteristics with both David and Lisa and I wondered (and am still wondering) whether if if were possible to somehow merge these characters then would that produce a type of balance" In other words, its not that for me the stimuli aren't there to produce psychoses, and some response to stimuli is needed, but by then moving onto other things, the response doesn't fester into something more serious. Maybe that's true, but maybe it's wishful thinking. For now, I won't try to resolve that.
I also wondered what it would be like if we all had ready access to a psychiatrist in the Henry Da Silva mode, having conversations on our frustrations as needed. Would that help? Giving such access to adolescents, as in the film, makes some sense as at that age a person's worldview is not yet a settled thing, and the psychiatrist can help the person work through the various dilemmas. As an an economist, I'm quite aware that demand heavily outweighs supply in this domain. I'm ignoring that issue here. I'm just wondering about the benefits from a normative view, taking my assume-a-can-opener approach.
So, I wondered if old farts like me might still benefit from such conversations with a psychiatrist, or is it enough to talk things out with friends once in a while. My sense of things is that we repress our anger frequently, vent occasionally, and sometimes indulge in unhealthy recreation as a form of consolation. Is there a better way and would chatting with a psychiatrist help us find it?
The movie itself is a charming love story and I think it works on that level because the characters are otherwise more extreme than we're use to. But there are some minor flaws in the film that I'll simply mention here. Keir Dullea was in his mid 20's when the film was made and the other actors in the school were also in their 20's or in their late teens. In other words, they were too old for high school, under otherwise ordinary circumstances. This is not a big deal in the movie because they seem approximately the same age, relative to each other. For comparison sake, I did a search on Welcome Back Kotter and found the same issue emerges these. The other flaw I'll mention concerns David's grooming, which is immaculate. But how could he get a haircut if he wouldn't let anyone else touch him? It's a puzzler. Now I'll leave that one alone too.
One last point I'll make is in the form of a question. Would younger audiences today be drawn in by this movie or is a generational thing where people my age would find it compelling but younger folks today would not, perhaps because so many of then are already experiencing anxiety, loneliness, and depression that they don't need a film to remind them of that? I don't know. Bridging across the generations is a challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment