Finding Courage through Finding Dory: Pixar and My Mental Health

​For a year and a half I've struggled to understand my mental health disability. This weekend I saw a children's film, starring colorful cartoon fish, that confronted exactly what I've had to learn. Finding Dory, which just debuted to the most successful animated opening in history, is focused on a character with a mental disability and how she perseveres through it.

There is lots to love about the film. I enjoyed the relentless creativity that seemed to find its focus when the filmmakers limited themselves to the confines of the Marine Life Institute. The new characters, all with physical or attitude issues, were a constant delight. I admired how it emphasized that both family and close friendships play unique roles in life. But what captivated me was how the story of Dory's memory loss related to my own life.

The film opens on the teeny, adorable, blue blob that is young Dory repeating after her parents, "Hello, my name is Dory and I suffer from short term memory loss." Right from the beginning of both the film and Dory's life, there is a naive acceptance of her disability. Dory will struggle with this for the rest of her life and her parents are preparing her early in how to deal with it.

Dory's task, and the basic story of the film, is to locate her parents;n first within the wide ocean and then within the endless aquariums of the Marine Life Institute. It's a tall order by itself, but with the added complications of her condition, it seems insurmountable.

Seven years ago, the time came for me to learn how to drive. I took the most comprehensive driving course my parent's could find. I practiced and practiced. But I didn't pass. I still don't have my license.

Driving our family Sienna down country roads was easy enough, even enjoyable. But when I arrived at differing intersections, or engaged in complicated lane changes, or tackled at the tight maneuvering of parking, it got dangerous. I recall two separate incidents were I would have had an accident or even been killed, had my co-driver not yelled at me to stop. My brain flips the intersections around. I yield when turning left at a red light because that's what you do when you have to turn right. Or I stop but not look when crossing a highway. It's like there is a blank space in my brain that appears only 10% of the time. It takes over when I least expect it.

It wasn't until I received a formal diagnoses of my disabilities that it became clear why I was struggling so much. I was not just stupid. I was not just lazy. (Although my truck-driving uncles insisted otherwise.) I had a documented problem that was known to effect exactly this skill. So I accepted the frustrations of not being able to drive. I relinquished control and was at peace with the situation.

Just last month, after a year and a half of waiting, I made the decision to master these weaknesses and learn how to drive. The time had come. I was ready. But when I started doing research into how my disorder affects drivers, I panicked. I was confronted again by the reasons for my lack of a license. I wanted to give up.

In the film, Dory is confronted by impossibilities again and again. And she keeps swimming. She acknowledges her limitations, her weaknesses, and her problems. She knows she will need help to get around them. She's humble about this. She's honest, even to strangers. But she does not give up. Because she knows that finding her parents matters. This battle is worth fighting for, right to the very end. Watching her determination renewed my own efforts to learn how to drive.

At one point in the story, young Dory wakes from sleep to her mother sobbing as her father attempts to comfort her. They agonize over her condition. Is it their fault? Will their daughter survive? Have they failed as parents? Dory offers a heartfelt apology to her parents for her condition. Her parents offer their unconditional love and insist this is not her fault. Watching these cartoon fish cry over memory loss reminded me of the heartbreak my parents have gone through wrestling with these very questions.

But the film emphasizes another point, one that has taken me years to learn. Dory requires her friend Marvin's analytical brain to support her. But Dory's unusual, and very different personality is absolutely necessary for the success of her quest. Her out-of-the-box thinking, unique handling of prickly personalities, and enthusiastic outlook seem crazy and often on the verge of falling apart. But in the end, she is a gift to those around her.

It took me 6 months of fighting my disability through medication before I realized that my personality has both strengths and weaknesses*. I was created this way by God and while it will take a lot of work and understanding for me to work well within it, there is also much to enjoy about it. My uniqueness is a gift. It will have consequences both positive and negative. But I need to be quick to thank God for the way he has made me and relish the opportunities it provides.

The bright, jolly cartoon characters of Finding Nemo have been part of our social fabric for 13 years. How brave of Pixar to tackle dealing with disabilities in its long-awaited sequel. What a sign of their artistic integrity to do so in a story that's ultimately joyous, imaginative, and engaging.

*I realize my situation is as unique, just as everyone else's is. I've seen firsthand how medication can make an incredible impact on many people. I have also seen firsthand the pain and confusion it can cause. If you have friends or family on any kind of mental health medication, take the time to understand their needs before pronouncing your opinion. It requires much, much empathy, wisdom, and prayer to maneuver these situations.

Her (2013)

This review was originally published in January 2014. The images are from the film and are not my own.

This isn’t so much a review as it is an attempt to describe my personal reflections upon seeing Spike Jonze’s excellent new film Her. In case anyone wonders after reading reading my thoughts, I do recommend seeing this complex and beautiful analysis of a modern human condition and I plan on returning to it again. 

Arcade Fire’s latest album Reflektor has been playing almost non-stop. I’m a little late getting into it (the album came out just before Christmas music season) but  the timing is perfect, since Arcade Fire also scored Spike Jonze Her. And it turns out that the themes that the album and the film explore are similar, as other reviewers have pointed out. Both wrestle with a modern problem, the challenge of a relationship that is sustained by technology

The film effortlessly realizes a possible not-to-distant future where slick software is built into everyday hardware, and where the auditory is emphasized over the visual, especially in the way we use our computers.  In this world no one minds who talks to their computer while on the crowded subway, in the busy square, or even at work. And this is all captured by a shallow focus and detail rich cinematography that complements beautifully the aesthetics of that world.

The acting is equally effortless. Joaquin Phoenix plays the melancholy Theodore who, despite both his vocation as a letter writer and the long standing friendships he enjoys, finds himself alone at night in his light-filled apartment, sleepless and turning to the pale light of his constant companion, his phone.

As I watched this scene play out, I realized that I must not be the only insomniac who turns to his phone for relief. Mind you, the film was intensely personal to me in many other aspects I shouldn’t be surprised. Like how Theodore enjoys a long-standing, unromantic friendship with his friend Amy and how the person with whom he grew up and shared so many memories with is now distant and hard to reach.

And so we are brought to the central message of this film: real human relationships are much messier then artificial ones, yet satisfy in ways the others never could. Theodore’s relationship with his wife Kathy stretches far into their past, as we are gradually shown through flashbacks and memories. The two grew up together, studied together, and are so intertwined as personalities and friends that their lives became inseparable. So when their marriage finally falls apart, the unraveling is so painful, it takes Theodore “three months to write the letter T on the divorce papers.” The scene where he finally finishes writing his name while she signed hers across the table was painfully real, merging Theodore’s memory with reality and showing the tragedy that is two people so joined together split apart. 

But Theodore was previously reluctant to sign those papers (“we’ve been married so long”). It wasn’t someone who encouraged him to move on, it was something. His new operating system is also his new partner and the realization of the digital relationships that kept him awake at night on his previous phone. Now to be fair, Samantha, his OS, is voiced by Scarlet Johansson, and is a captivating personality. And their chemistry together is so effortlessly realized that I had to constantly remind myself that it was just a performance. On paper too, this concept courts cliche. But on the screen it is realized with a tenderness and poignancy that is beautiful to watch. 

"You’ve always wanted a wife without the challenges of actually dealing with anything real" Theodore’s ex claims. "I’m glad that you’ve found someone." Part of the film’s brilliance is Theodore and Sam’s relationship it is actually more complicated then that. But as captivating and satisfying as Samantha is, in the end she is just a machine. Unlike her claim that humans and computers are both evolved matter and therefore the same, the truth is, humans are distinct and separate. Samantha is a replacement, a replacement that was not meant to be.

The more I think about it, the more I think the anthem for the movie is Arcade Fire’s song Porno. The song explores the temptation that is porn and the damage it causes in relationships and in lives. Porn is a replacement of something good for something that on the surface appears satisfying. “We are only here briefly, and in this moment I want to allow myself joy” a friend of Theodore’s says in the film, but this joy that she is seeking, as layered and alluring as it is, is ultimately artificial. And when Theodore has aural sex with Samantha, it is the culmination of the aural internet sex that he experimented with online earlier, a cheap substitute for the real thing, unnatural and wrong. 

So there something to learn from this masterpiece of a movie. There is superficial matter that is itself beautiful, alluring, and complex, but it can distract us from who we should be focusing on. There are relationships that are romantic as well as long-lasting friends and these will be tested, tugged at, and even torn. But they are worth fighting for and maintaining, even in our digital age. As Arcade Fire sings,

"I know you’re living in my mind

It’s not the same as being alive.

If telling the truth is not polite

Then I guess we’ll have to fight.”

12 Years a Slave (2013): Reflections on the Film

This review was originally published in December 2013. The images are from the film and are not my own.

I went into this film expecting a harrowing experience, but excited none the less to see a challenging work of art. And as I watched it I found critiques, both positive and negative, hard to make due to the nature of the film’s subject matter. But there is a line in the film where Solomon says that he trusted those who kidnapped them because they were artists. And so even artists deserve correction.

The acting in the movie is, for the most part, outstanding. Chiwetel Ejiofor hits both the highs and lows, and is especially evocative during the lows. Michael Fassbender creates a character who is evil but not just a caricature (unlike the kidnappers who felt like side characters in a Tintin book).

The cinematography contributed powerfully to the story, not just the lighting (one scene right after Solomon is kidnaped shows his face in darkness and his captors face illumiated with light) but also the visual imagery (Solomon tightly winding his violin until it snaps right after Patsy’s brutal whipping). The music also added to the story, full of tension and grace without being distracting. (I was surprised to learn it was compared by Hans Zimmer. I'm used to him being bold or bombastic, not subtle and creative like this time.)

Steve McQueen’s previous works include Hunger and Shame, and he once said that both were part of the same story. They are concerned with human extremes (one with physical violence, the other with sexual violence; interesting that both of these themes come into play in 12 Years a Slave) and this film seems equally fascinated with human extremes. Many have said that the unflinching shot of Solomon hanging from a nose while his feet try to keep their bearing in the mud is a picture that describes the rest of the film - an unflinching look of a man stuck in an unnatural situation, in which he tries to avoid making false moves that will take his life. And the movie is more then anything else fascinated with this situation. Perhaps if it were a documentary the evils portrayed would have been more horrifying, but as an audience member we know that we are seeing actors subjected to these emotions and these acts of physical violence. And I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that.

What fascinated me more were the scenes with Benedict Cumberbatch’s character (another terrific acting job, what a repertoire this man is building for himself!) who plays an Anglican minister caught up in Solomon’s story. He and his wife have a conscience - you can see it in their eyes and in their actions. But they are part of a slave-owning and racially biased culture, so how can they reconcile the two?

Perhaps I can relate. I see our modern day evils, some of which are equal to the evils portrayed in the film. I look with compassion, but in the end I am part of a culture that endorses and has built its economy around it. The men of history who stand out, men like Lincoln and Wilberforce and Martin Luther King, were those who didn’t care about what the culture said and acted anyway.