Do you see death when you look at me?

Narratives of Death and Narratives of Love in the FIlm “Look Both Ways”

Reviewed by Michal Lapinski

(Presented at the APAS Conference in Sydney, July 2008)

“Original art work©️ https://www.gosialapinski.com”

The true artist taps into the uncharted sources of internal truth. She attempts to capture it and transform it so it becomes available — expressed through the imagery, narrative and the form of her work. In this way, the artist conveys more that she consciously 'knows'. Patrick White, when commenting on various meanings attributed to his work, reiterated that what he created was coming from his intuition. 

We find ourselves resonating with the artistic endeavour on several levels, an important one being our inner intuitive understanding. In our interaction with the work of art, we form our own narrative/s which may be articulated and spelt out or not. Sometimes we try to understand the meaning of the work and end up formulating an interpretation. This is not dissimilar to what we do as psychoanalysts, but we have to also acknowledge that we can learn a lot from artists and poets.

I can see a possibility of adopting a view that the whole film can be conceived of as a narrative, an artistic transformation (in Ferro's and Bion's sense) of the underlying emotional theme (an "ineffable truth"?). We can gather our responses to it and develop them into a narrative, or several narratives, and those could lead to an inner dialogue and a general discussion. 

I want to speak about one particular "narrative" that was evoked in me by watching the film, Look Both Ways. I would call it “Do you see death when you look at me?”.

SUMMARY OF THE FILM

Look Both Ways is a 2005 Australian drama film, written and directed by Sarah Watt, starring William McInnes and Justine Clarke. Set over one scorching weekend in Adelaide, it weaves together the lives of several characters who are grappling with their struggles and fears. The story starts with a tragic accident involving a train, which sets the tone for the interconnected narratives that unfold. The main protagonists, Meryl and Nick, accidentally meet at the scene.

Meryl, talented but unaccomplished artist, is struggling with the death of her father. Her vulnerability and her worst fears are expressed in her paintings. Her vivid imagination is depicted in the animated sequences of the film.

Nick, whose job as a photographer is often to report disasters and tragic accidents, is present at those scenes and is constantly exposed to the direct representation of death. Having lost his father not long ago, he presently learns that he has metastasised testicular cancer.

The other characters of the film navigate their emotional landscapes, struggling with grief, loneliness, and existential fears. Their stories parallel the main themes of the film.

In this highly charged emotional context, the relationship between Meryl and Nick develops, goes through a crisis of commitment, and then continues. The film leaves the viewer with the final accelerated sequence of their life together, heading, like life itself, to an end.

DISCUSSION

We and the heroes of the film start by seeing death everywhere. It spreads further and further into the corpus of the film, and potentially into Nick’s body. Death is shown as a part of ordinary family life when it takes Nick’s and then Meryl’s father. The catastrophic death in a train crash forms a backdrop of daily news. But it can also happen in the middle of a sunny day under a “slow-moving” but unstoppable “freight train”. 

Death is ever present in Meryl’s imagination and is captured in still photos of Nick.

Meryl tries to contain her unspeakable terrors and transform them through her art. She suffers from verbal inarticulateness and she uses her art to help her – as a “shock painting” that “is cheaper than therapy”. But art can be indeed “cheap’ when it offers only some comfort but lacks depth derived from processed and shared emotional experiences. Then its expression is closer to semi-hallucinatory flashes rather than to metabolised and transformed dream-like representation. Due to the unavailability of such a transforming function, Meryl is still terrified of getting immersed in depth (of emotional relationships). It is where untamed terrors are lurking for her, like sharks, it is where she fears she could perish.

As a photographer, Nick observes and registers traumatic and often unspeakably horrible reality. He ends up with products that could be pictograms but which are more akin to undigested facts. Nick is unable to process and transform them. We are led to think that it is this traumatic and toxic material, combined with his pro-creative failure, that erupts in a concrete form as the cancerous growth in his reproductive organs. And, as this is accompanied by a failure of containment, there is a danger of the spread of the deadly force. The equivalent of a “carcinogen that is everywhere” is psychic negativity that proliferates and metastasises.

The main heroes – Meryl and Nick – are in search of a loving, containing and understanding partner. At the same time, they both doubt the possibility and availability of such a relationship. They conduct anxiety-ridden and awkward conversations, while implicitly asking, “Who would want to love me with my insecurity and my terrors”; and then, “Whose love would be available if a disaster struck.

They are both involved in representing through pictures the world that they live in and the world that they try to inhabit internally. But they cannot, so far, make it safe and fully livable.

Nick is commercially successful in representing the horrors of the world in direct images. But internally he cannot succeed in representing himself to the world, and he is in danger of “losing it” (“dropping the bundle”, like the woman he photographs) when confronted with the terror of the ultimate loss.

Meryl questions Nick’s kind of representation. It is for her only a useless reminder of  “all this shit in the world”. But her representations are not successful either. Her pictures don’t sell and she cannot “sell them” to herself – she herself does not believe in the real value of her creations.

Each of the heroes needs to find the Other to make them believe in themselves, to validate them, to love them and to help them live. 

Meryl’s representation of a helplessly drowning child which is discarded and rubbished, has to be picked up by Nick in order to gain significance through his interest, then love. It acts as a message in a bottle sent by a lost soul. Nick’s action is one of reception, mini-transformation and interpretation in action – it validates and gives meaning to Meryl’s hidden and repudiated narrative.

But it all requires a more substantial emotional change for further development to take place. Stifled feelings have to start flowing, like the long-awaited rain after the scorcher weekend.  Meryl has to stop running away and go back to the possibility of encounter with love, life and death. Nick also has to find and meet the emotional Other. Only then the repudiated, “toxic” “cancerous “part of him can be acknowledged and embraced —  Meryl’s action of love and compassion. Concurrently, Meryl’s internal picture of the life terrors can acquire meaning in the context of grief and compassion.

Meryl and Nick, as well as other couples depicted in the film, are tested in their capacity to deal emotionally and collaboratively with life-and-death narratives. Loving understanding cannot be assumed or 'given'. It has to emerge out of mutual truthful commitment in which love can be embraced and awareness of death, endings, limitations is not run away from.  When such awareness — of horrors and wonders of life — can be faced together, narratives of life can develop and prevail.  Paradoxically, the question 'Do you see death in me' has to be answered 'yes', but not as a nihilistic acceptance, but as a confirmation of surviving love and affirmation of life that is looked at “both ways” – a life that encompasses both narratives. 

By facing the horrors of death and fears of life together, the heroes had to re-find one another in a new dimension. There is relief in meeting a real life, and sadness of losing the defensive protective shield.

The ending of the film suggests a possibility of transformation of the narrative dominated by death into a narrative of mutual healing through life-giving loving understanding. But is not a soapy happy ending. It confronts the viewer, in fast motion, with a perspective of a productive life growing and telescoping into its inevitable demise. We are left wondering if the life’s ending still does not come all too soon. As we always do, when faced with narratives of death which is inevitable, and of love, which, however strong, is not able to eradicate it. But it makes the life full, rich and worth living, providing that we have been able to “look both ways”.