Based on a true story, this film is a documentary fiction. A Blackfoot Indian who has fought in France in the Second World War and had had an accident there that let him comatose for a couple of days experiences great behavior disorder when back I n the USA. He is treated in Topeka, Kansas, as a veteran and they come to the conclusion that there is nothing physiologically wrong with him and at the same time the diagnosis that comes next, that of schizophrenia, does not accommodate all the symptoms. The boss of this military hospital knows a French anthropologist, trained as a psychoanalyst, in New York and he invites him for a couple of consultations with the patient. From a couple it will lead to a few dozens if not more, one a day for a rather long period.
At the time psychoanalysis could only look for personal disorders at the sexual level having to do with parents, infancy, childhood, and then women (for men). The case concentrates on women and the patient finds some relief in that approach. This is very interesting how the anthropologist who is a specialist of come North American Indians, the Mojave actually, uses his knowledge of Indian culture and one language to build some trust between him and the Indian and on the basis of that trust he is able to penetrate the private life and mind of the Indian. But he does not really use the understanding of Indian culture to see what is shown in the film but not exploited at all, the fact that the Indians are systematically negated in their culture by all kinds of institutions. We can see in the film the fact that this military hospital for veterans does not have one Indian nurse or doctor able to understand the alienation of Indians in white society. Then you have the daughter of the Indian who is in the hands of catholic nuns for her education. Then you could speak of the way these Indians dress in the most white American way possible, with ties, shirts, suits, and the girls the very same way with scarves, dresses, etc. Hair cuts are standard north American.
At the same time this Indian cannot get money at the post office or the bank without a good Caucasian (not North American since the French doctor is able to do it) signing for him. A white nurse tells the Indian a tall tale one day in another hospital where he is supposed to go through special tests, and she cannot in any way ignore that what she is telling him is B.S. And even the French doctor who was called in because he was an anthropologist who had spent two years with the Mojave Indians, at the end, asserts that he did not help the Indian because he was an Indian but because he was suffering. In other words he negates his own expertise. And that is justified in his mind because he did think his expertise was not with Indian culture (that was only a means to build trust) but psychoanalysis. He even, early in the film, creates some blurred situation when he advocates the typically French godless secular philosophy to an Indian who declares himself a Catholic though he knows about old Indian religions that he has "rejected" under the influence of course, but not of alcohol this time. It is also called duress.
The problem we are dealing with here is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome of American Indians who have been vastly exterminated, then locked up in reservations under rules that forced them to drop their cultures, their dances and their languages, to get educated and integrated in the American society, language, culture and all. What is the intention of Arnaud Desplechin? To remain as close as possible to the way the case was treated at the time? Maybe but naïve since the audience cannot sort out the real stake here. Yet it is surprising he does not use what has become standard today over the last ten years. It is called the decolonization of the mind. He only shows how the Indian mind is colonized and never questions his psychoanalytical approach that makes the syndrome the result of personal sexual problems.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
At the time psychoanalysis could only look for personal disorders at the sexual level having to do with parents, infancy, childhood, and then women (for men). The case concentrates on women and the patient finds some relief in that approach. This is very interesting how the anthropologist who is a specialist of come North American Indians, the Mojave actually, uses his knowledge of Indian culture and one language to build some trust between him and the Indian and on the basis of that trust he is able to penetrate the private life and mind of the Indian. But he does not really use the understanding of Indian culture to see what is shown in the film but not exploited at all, the fact that the Indians are systematically negated in their culture by all kinds of institutions. We can see in the film the fact that this military hospital for veterans does not have one Indian nurse or doctor able to understand the alienation of Indians in white society. Then you have the daughter of the Indian who is in the hands of catholic nuns for her education. Then you could speak of the way these Indians dress in the most white American way possible, with ties, shirts, suits, and the girls the very same way with scarves, dresses, etc. Hair cuts are standard north American.
At the same time this Indian cannot get money at the post office or the bank without a good Caucasian (not North American since the French doctor is able to do it) signing for him. A white nurse tells the Indian a tall tale one day in another hospital where he is supposed to go through special tests, and she cannot in any way ignore that what she is telling him is B.S. And even the French doctor who was called in because he was an anthropologist who had spent two years with the Mojave Indians, at the end, asserts that he did not help the Indian because he was an Indian but because he was suffering. In other words he negates his own expertise. And that is justified in his mind because he did think his expertise was not with Indian culture (that was only a means to build trust) but psychoanalysis. He even, early in the film, creates some blurred situation when he advocates the typically French godless secular philosophy to an Indian who declares himself a Catholic though he knows about old Indian religions that he has "rejected" under the influence of course, but not of alcohol this time. It is also called duress.
The problem we are dealing with here is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome of American Indians who have been vastly exterminated, then locked up in reservations under rules that forced them to drop their cultures, their dances and their languages, to get educated and integrated in the American society, language, culture and all. What is the intention of Arnaud Desplechin? To remain as close as possible to the way the case was treated at the time? Maybe but naïve since the audience cannot sort out the real stake here. Yet it is surprising he does not use what has become standard today over the last ten years. It is called the decolonization of the mind. He only shows how the Indian mind is colonized and never questions his psychoanalytical approach that makes the syndrome the result of personal sexual problems.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU