The King’s Speech:  Scotch Tape and Glue, Beethoven, and a Bit of Love

So often today people seeking help for emotional problems are sent to an array of experts who at best help them in a fragmented way.  There is no one stop shopping for mental health, and it is rare to find a true therapeutic relationship.

The speech therapist, Lionel Logue, in “The King’s Speech” forms a transformative relationship with his illustrious patient, King George the VI.  There are so many facets to the “cure” of the King’s stammering; the relationship that develops between these two men is rich, human, textured, and uplifting.  In the final scene, as the King delivers his speech to his people, the score is Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, the two men enact a carefully choreographed bag of tricks to help “Bertie” through his rough spots, their eyes meeting often underscoring the entirely human cure that is at work.  A relationship, indeed a friendship in this case, love, respect, and some tricks, carry the day.

I was reminded of a patient I saw early in my career who had a stuttering problem.  As was the case in the movie, he had also been trained out of left handedness at an early age.  There were other similarities as well.  His stuttering stopped after a few months of psychotherapy with me, but we did not have any tricks.  I never totally understood what happened, but my best guess is that we made a very good human connection, and he felt genuinely accepted by me.  Also, he became in touch with some of his anger during our work, which I believe was very liberating to him.  I cared, I listened, I inquired, I didn’t judge.  He found his anger.  I was involved.

Although my approach is generally long term, there are times when a piece of very important work can be done in a short term, sometimes six months, as was the case with my patient with the speech difficulties.

Melancholia

Warning:  Spoiler Alert

Melancholia, Lars Von Trier’s 2011 film, features the terrifying approach of a planet that will either fly by or destroy the earth.  The two planets play off a parallel drama with two sisters who occupy the poles of extreme depression and anxiety. In the opening shots of the movie, the planet creates a second cast shadow on a sundial, and the trees also cast two shadows on the lawn. The anxious sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourgh, would appear to have been ensconced in an idyllic mansion replete with golf course and servants but no televisions, effectively cut off from the world by her controlling and wealthy husband. As the planets near each other, this world becomes a place in which natural light creates two cast shadows.

Melancholia of course also refers to the psychological state of Justine (Kristen Dunst,) who we meet on the way from her wedding ceremony to the reception at her sister's mansion.  We are initially seduced by her beauty, finding her in her stunning wedding gown, perfect pearl earring, and her adoring and handsome groom, playfully running two hours late to her own party.  Many shots of her coy smiles, her sensuality, her playful interaction with her groom,  and we want to be convinced, and almost are, that we are meeting a woman on the happiest day of her life.

The planet about to approach and destroy the earth, is called Melancholia, and there was a period of the movie where I took this for a metaphor or possibly a dark delusion, or a representation of Justine’s love affair with destruction.  And yet the planet becomes more and more real as the movie progresses.

I am oddly gripped by the approach of the planet looming gorgeously in the sky, changing the light and the air, imagining myself being able to bravely face the end of the world, and behold it with terror and awe.  The raw purity of knowing there would be absolutely nothing to do but behold and experience, even if for a moment of life, seems to me to be an enlightened state. In that moment, as the planet approaches irrevocably, things just are absolutely larger and more powerful than any human drama, anything a human being could possibly do or not do.

I lose touch completely with what the anxious sister is feeling as she sobs and rails against the loss of her world, her husband, her son, and her life.  

I don’t romanticize more ordinary deaths, of old age, or car crashes or heart attacks. But there is something about imagining this type of end, where the natural world proves itself to be so much more powerful than any of our human accomplishments or frailties, that I find oddly exhilarating.  No comfort in being remembered by those who survive, there will be no survivor.  The force of nature, huge and arbitrary, simply destroys and creates.