2019 is the Year of Psychomagic Therapy: Honey Boy, The Souvenir, Pain & Glory

As the decade winds to a close, a recent pattern of personal and reflective filmmaking has emerged. It seems after this whole rollercoaster of whatever that was, we all have a need for some deep, spiritual healing. Not just any spiritual healing either, I'm talking some straight up Psychomagic–the term Alejandro Jodorowsky coined for his own theatrical twist on Gestalt therapy. In Psychomagic, you not only reenact moments from your past, but you hire an entire film crew, fly to the location where it all went down, recreate your memories with sets and then make an entire movie about it. Actually Jodorowsky's method entails various types of role playing, from public reenactment to symbolic performances only you know about, but its end goal is the same: using a "poetic act as a solution to [humanity's] grotesque communication... a social exorcism in front of numerous spectators."

You can see this concept in action through Jodorowsky’s last two autobiographical films, The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016). It’s nothing new to have a director both write and create an autobiographical film, but Jodorowsky’s method takes it all a step further. Both films star Jodorowsky as a narrative specter of his present, as well as two of his sons, Brontis and Adan, cast as his father and his younger self respectively. These films deal very directly with his own personal pain, recreating the isolation he felt, along with instances of his father physically mother physically and emotionally abusing him. Yet, by casting his sons in starring roles, Jodorowsky is creating a new bridge of empathy towards his abusive father and his pained younger self. In the book version of The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography, Jodorowsky explains how he came up with the concept of Psychomagic and its purpose as a tool of healing: "Rather than resisting or fleeing a problem, by entering it, making oneself part of it, one can use it as an element of liberation... The poetic act must always be positive, aiming for construction and not destruction." Rather than using a role or story as simply catharsis, an airing of blame or an emotional blood-letting, Jodorowsky advocates that you become your pain; forgive your pain by embodying it fully and learning to love the bomb, as it were, in order to grow beyond it.

I've been thinking a lot about Psychomagic, in part because Jodorowsky just released a film based entirely around the concept: Psychomagic, An Art That Heals (2019). It's not currently available outside of France yet and, well, unfortunately ho studiato un'altra lingua e quindi non capisco il francese, if you know what I mean. But ironically, and lucky for us, there's been a handful of other offerings this year that fit the bill until Psychomagic can get some foreign distribution.

The most recent of these films is Honey Boy (2019), directed by Alma Har'el. Honey Boy was written by Shia LaBeouf about his life as a successful child star growing up in a severely broken home, and the lasting consequences it had on his adulthood. Noah Jupe plays young Otis, an obvious stand-in for LaBeouf, the sensitive boy who’s trying his best to navigate the idealistic world of make-believe he gets paid to live in against the abusive and fringe life his father provides for him. James, his ex-rodeo clown and felon of a father, is played by Shia LaBeouf himself–taking a page directly out of Jodorowsky’s book. LaBeouf sure doesn’t sugar coat it either; he portrays his father as a hustler, a user, a serial liar, and an irrationally jealous and aggressive person. All of this anger is then echoed in Lucas Hedges’s portrayal of the older, ‘current day’ Otis, who is trying to come to grips with himself in court-ordered rehab.

Shia LaBeouf has been pretty open about his relationship to his parents, as well as his own diagnosis of PTSD after serving his stint in court-ordered rehab for some very public violent and drunk outbursts. Honey Boy, for all of its pie-in-the-face bluster, chicken jokes and gallows humor, is an overwhelmingly sad film. The emotional heart of this film boils down to a rather devastating tale of the desire to be loved. James is shown to be a clearly insecure and broken man, struggling with both his shattered dreams, feelings of powerlessness, addiction and the burden of his family’s disapproval for his unforgivable mistakes. He desperately just wants to be liked, but his insecurity keeps driving him to extreme reactions–such as lashing out at his son for achieving the celebrity dreams he could not. We never see him be truly sincere or vulnerable; in one scene we think he’s sharing his backstory in a heartfelt manner at an AA meeting, but Otis later dismisses it as what was most likely a tangled web of lies. Meanwhile, Otis just wants both a normal life and his father’s love, two things that are directly at odds with each other.

LaBeouf gives an incredibly strong performance, and it’s understandable how he could have ended up with PTSD after an upbringing full of whiplash anger and gas lighting. He doesn’t claim the film to be fully factual, but it was clearly a healing experience for him to get inside his father’s shoes. That said, I’m not entirely sure Shia LaBeouf was truly ready to confront the topic of his father head-on. Unlike Jodorowsky, who has several decades on LaBeouf when it comes to processing and forgiveness, what we are witnessing in Honey Boy appears to be the process of LaBeouf engaging in Psychomagic, more than the final results. We see a lot of James’ day-to-day life, but we never truly see into his heart and mind. James’ few reflective moments feel more like half-assed apologies than they do true efforts to fix the growing rift with his son. Meanwhile, Otis feels somehow less knowable; shown simply as a passive sponge for all of his father’s anxieties and aggression. Perhaps this distance is more pronounced in part because LaBeouf isn’t the director, though considering how much LaBeouf has already given the public I don’t blame him for holding back in the script.

The Souvenir (2019) is a similarly depressing film based on writer and director Joanna Hogg’s experience with a toxic boyfriend in 1980’s England. Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is a young film student who falls into a romantic relationship with the mysterious Anthony (Tom Burke), a seemingly posh and worldly young man. What follows is an exploration of the threshold between one's childhood and one's adulthood; two 20-somethings play acting as adults so intensely that they end up out of their depths, with life-altering consequences for both. Anthony, it turns out, is addicted to heroin and begins to use Julie in order to aid in his addiction. Julie is naively intent on helping Anthony and so focused on doing the right thing by the man she thought loved her, that she doesn’t see how badly she’s being emotionally abused until it’s too late.

While Hogg does not appear in the film herself, she made several deeply personal choices in order to bring her film to as close to the truth as she was comfortable with sharing. She chose to cast Honor in part because her mother, the famous Tilda Swinton, knew Hogg personally during this specific relationship. She used her own diaries and photographs as supplemental material for Honor in order for her to understand where she was at that point in her life. Hogg even shot the film sequentially in order to keep Honor in the dark about about the severity of Anthony’s addictions, recreating the arch of her own slow realization. What The Souvenir captures best is indeed the terror and confusion of gaslighting, naive denial of the obvious, and the childlike impulse to accept secrets in place of substance. Julie embraces the unknown in her partner in place of pursuing her own life; her drive and happiness waste away along with her apartment, as furniture is sold or stolen by Anthony for extra cash. Their seemingly fancy trip to Venice particularly hammers home the disconnect between Julie’s expectations of who she believes Anthony is with his less sparkling reality.

The film ends with Julie turning back to her art in order to heal herself from the emotional rollercoaster that was Anthony. She takes all of the lost time she spent worrying over him and ignoring her studies, and she puts it instead towards an investment in her own future and happiness by making movies. Which is, of course, exactly what Hogg did. It had to have been therapeutic for her to publicly tell a story she’d been thinking about telling since 1988. That said, Hogg, like LaBeouf, keeps her audience at arm's length to a degree. We never get to see where Anthony goes, or what he’s actually doing, which takes away from our understanding and empathy towards him as a character. Perhaps it was too hard for Hogg to get any closer to the subject herself, or perhaps she still doesn’t fully understand Anthony’s motivations. She also might have felt it wasn’t her place to try and tell his side of the story. Either way, The Souvenir is a raw and honest portrayal of wounds that will never quite heal, and the strength you can derive from focusing that experience into artistic creation.

Last but not least, we have Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory (2019), all at once the most optimistic and least literal of all three films. Salvador (Antonio Banderas) is a movie director who suffers from a handful of problems that stem from his advancing age. For one, he’s constantly sick, riddled with physical ailments from back pain to persistent migraines. On top of that, he’s worried he’s lost the ability to create–a worry which leads him to the door of Alberto (Asier Etxeandia), his once lead actor with whom he’s had a falling out. While Alberto is initially hesitant to reconnect, the two of them end up bonding through some, uh, light heroin use. It’s through drug use that Salvador flashes back to his childhood, reminiscing about his provincial and hard-working parents, as well as a strapping young neighbor (César Vicente) that he taught to read and write when he himself was a boy. Alberto eventually pushes him to allow him to release a short play that Salvador wrote based on a lost love; a man named Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who, ironically, Salvador had to leave due to this man’s disruptive drug use. By chance, Federico happens to be in town and randomly sees the play. He then shows up at Salvador’s door, causing him to rethink some of his current life choices and take action towards creating happiness in his life. 

I can’t help but think of another Jodorowsky quote about Psychomagic where he says: “You cannot heal someone; you can only teach him how to heal himself.” If I had to sum up Pain and Glory in a sentence, that would be it. Almodovar makes it clear that self-medication doesn’t actually solve anything–from Salvador’s drug use to hiding behind the memories of his achievements or his fawning fans. It’s only until Salvador gets the half-courage to put himself and his pain out there in the form of an anonymous play that he makes any real progress. Seemingly by magic, this emotionally honest play attracts the one person in the world who could resolve a major piece of the pain puzzle that is Salvadaor’s life. This experience with Federico then develops a new, non-substance addiction in Salvador, the addiction of getting to the root of all of his problems. Suddenly Salvador wants to not only make good with his past, but he’s proactive about visiting the doctor and trying to cure his ailments instead of running from them. It’s a beautiful reflection of a filmmaker by a filmmaker, and while Almodovar claims there’s nothing literally autobiographical in the film, he does say Pain and Glory is his most personal work. Interestingly, Antonio Banderas found this film to be equally cathartic, saying its themes allowed him to work out his own pain and recent brush with mortality.

I can’t help but think that, like Jodorowsky, Pain and Glory’s insight stems from Almodovar’s older age. He’s got about 10 years on Hogg and 37 on LaBeouf, and perhaps that’s why he was able to be the most honest while still keeping his truths guarded. Self proclaimed work of “self fiction” or not, the film flirts with reality in a handful of ways: from Salvador’s sexuality, his choice of career and directorial style, the use of Almodovar’s apartment as set dressing, and even forcing his hairstyle on Antonio Banderas. Yet, despite these parallels, Almodovar sidesteps literal confession in order to mine from an emotional, and perhaps more universal, truth. Honestly, it might just be that Almodovar is still holding onto some sort of masculine ideal about emotional expression. He admits as much when he has Salvador proclaim his love for people holding back tears but not crying–something we get a whole lot of in this film. Similarly, Almodovar holds back his own Psyschomagic healing by collaging his life instead of just publicly confronting his truth. Though I imagine hiring Antonio Banderas to play you while you direct yourself going through the therapeutic motions of examining your own life until your Banderas-self is directing an even smaller version of you within the film is something that will, in some small way, facilitate healing.

While I’m surprised it’s taken this long in the decade for everybody to catch onto what Jodorowsky was hip to in the 1960s, I am glad we’re finally here. To be fair, it took Jodorowsky roughly 40 years himself to learn that “the only valid art is that which can serve to heal.” So here’s to a new decade of self understanding, empathy and magic.