Disintegrating, Kaleidoscope Style

Got my lessons all planned and ready for next week in the morning, so in the afternoon I went to National Museum of Art in Osaka to see a wonderful exhibition of paintings from the Pushkin Museum of Art in Moscow.

I hoped to capture an image indicative of Multiple Personality Disorder to link to my favourite "obscure" film today, and I think I found it in this collection of biscuit boxes in the souvenir shop.

I have always been fascinated by books and films which deal with the complex nature of "reality," it's fragility, subjectivity and ephemeral nature. No doubt that is why my favourite author is Philip K. Dick, since that is a theme which is central to almost all of his novels and short stories.

No surprise, then, that when I first saw this film, based on the non-fiction book written by the psychoanalyst Dr. Flora Rheta Schreiber about a young woman she treated who had sixteen separate and distinct personalities, I was hooked. Luckily, I had recorded it on VCR so I was able to watch it many times and marvel at Sally Field's astonishing performance. As Charlize Theron so correctly stated when she won her Academy Award for Monster, these kinds of powerful roles, which are a penny a dozen to the likes of DeNiro, Pacino, Hoffman and Walken, are rarely offered to female actors, so it is great to watch someone of Field's caliber give it her all.

I have read Schreiber's book three times and continue to find it extremely fascinating, although I have been disappointed to discover that her methods have come in for increased questioning and that she may have even exacerbated or exaggerated her patient's condition. Still, true or not, it's a great book and a terrific movie.

Do you know the film I'm talking about?

Christine

A New Kind Of Man