about / writing / video essays / films / contact
Far Out Magazine, 2024
Few films create a truly intimate connection between the main character and audience, offering insights so personal that they feel almost intrusive. We witness characters wrestle with deep-seated worries, articulate anxious thoughts, or retreat behind the words left unsaid. Often, this connection is achieved through fly-on-the-wall storytelling or slow cinema, where the unnoticed details of everyday life—our idiosyncrasies and bad habits—are laid bare. These techniques, often relying on slice-of-life narratives, naturalistic dialogue, and long, uninterrupted takes, expose a raw humanity. However, some filmmakers take an entirely different approach, using techniques that reveal the otherwise invisible processes of their characters’ inner worlds.
In films and television shows like Good Will Hunting, Ordinary People, Big Little Lies and Euphoria, the writers show the inner process of self-realisation and discovery through the characters’ relationships with their therapists. We cry with Will as we watch him become free of the guilt he carried over his childhood. We wade through Celeste’s denial as she tries to bat away the painful reality that her relationship is no longer loving.
Therapy is not something we ever watch people go through; it’s a private journey that is often explored alone, and by using this experience in film, it not only allows us to have a deeper understanding of the character, but it aligns us completely with their perspective, putting us entirely their shoes as we feel our way through the same feelings, wading through unchartered depths and going on the same emotional journey as they are.
We stumble through the same realisations and gain awareness at the same time as the character, empathetically connected as we’re placed in the middle, a private encounter that almost breaks the fourth wall. Therapy is usually only had between two people, and by including the audience in this dynamic, we’re placed in the inner world of a character in a way that is impossible outside of the medium of film, completely connected in a moment of all-encompassing reflection.
But what’s so interesting about the construction of these scenes is that they make the often invisible writing process visible to the audience. Instead of taking us from point A to Z with one scene or line, we move through all the points in between, moving from B to Y before eventually landing at the end, laying bare all the imperceptible changes and subtle shifts in our minds as we think about something that demands our attention, eventually leading to another imperceptible change. It’s not something we ever see, and when we do, it can be really moving.
In Euphoria, we see Jules as she ruminates on her identity, sexuality and relationships, exposing a complicated web of memories that eventually leave her with one realisation: the missing piece in the puzzle that can help her move forward. In Ordinary People, Conrad debates and cries with his therapist, unable to move on until he discovers this golden nugget of information. And when he finds it, we feel the same sense of relief as he does, distinctly aware of everything he’s been holding onto and ready to finally let go.
It’s a beautiful thing to see someone lay their vulnerabilities out before them, and something that is rarely seen by the eyes of strangers. By connecting us to the roots of a person, their fears, shame and secrets, it becomes a meditation on life itself, shattering the idea that we’re in it alone and connecting us in the universality of our own seemingly private experiences.