Don Juan DeMarco was released relatively early in my
clinical career. Though it is clearly
intended and presented as a fable, my sense was that it was a movie that
presented a pretty good outline for how a successful treatment might go. I have shown a clip from it in my Rorschach
class for years (Rorschach jokes onscreen are hard to come by) but have not
seen it in its entirety since it was first released. After watching “Through the Looking Glass”
with the reluctant stepdaughters, we decided to sample some of Johnny Depp’s
early work. Though the film was
originally probably rated R, it is pretty tame by today’s cable standards and
the material was not overly uncomfortable for family viewing with savvy late
teenagers, though the film was just not particularly interesting to them.
The reluctant wife and I, though noting that it is somewhat
dated, enjoyed rewatching it. She noted
that it is constructed much as Life of Pi, with two versions of reality that
are being considered. In both movies,
then, there are defenses against difficult material being mobilized. In Pi, it is against the monstrous within us
that is revealed when we do something terrible in the world, while in Don Juan
it appears that what is being defended against is the possibility of having done something wrong and/or the failure of
the idealization of a loved person. But
what is clearly different between the two movies is that Don Juan invites us to join in the more beautiful – more romantic view of life and to avoid
the hum drum quality that life can bring.
We meet Don Juan DeMarco as he is preparing to kill
himself. He is the self-proclaimed “world’s
greatest lover”, though we get to sample his exploits and (he is Johnny Depp
after all) the sample is quite convincing.
He has been frustrated in love by Dona Ana and is threatening to throw
himself from a billboard depicting her.
The problem is that this is not Castilian Spain but Manhattan and he is
the only one around who is dressed like Zorro.
The police call in Dr. Mickler, played by Marlon Brando who, overweight
and 10 days from retirement, may once have been the world’s greatest
psychiatrist (and onscreen a red-hot lover) but is now just dialing it in. He has an inspired moment, however, when he
announces to Don Juan that he, too, is a Don - Don Octavio - and he invites Don Juan to his Villa
to discuss this matter before doing something so irreversible as killing
himself. Don Juan agrees and they meet
the next day in what is apparent to everyone but Don Juan to be a psychiatric
hospital. Don Juan asserts that he is visiting Don Octavio in his Villa.
Don Juan’s romantic view of life is infectious. The female orderlies are clearly smitten by
him and even the male orderly, Rocco, precipitously decides to move to Spain
after spending a few days with him. More
centrally, Dr. Mickler begins to see the world – and his wife, played by Mia
Farrow – through rose colored glasses, and their love for each other is
reignited – as if Don Juan’s passion is infectious. (I think it worth noting that there is a long
tradition of the patient’s impact on the therapist being an essential element
of the “cure” of the patient that is depicted in films. The idea that the therapist is not simply a
technician but a human being involved in a deeply human relationship is apparent
to film writers and directors if not to insurance companies and some designers
of “therapeutic” interventions that focus on the content of what is delivered
rather than the process through which it is delivered).
The medium of infection is twofold. First Don Juan is devastatingly handsome and
charming. Second, he tells the story of
woe that brings him to Mickler’s villa in an engaging and romantic style. Through flash backs we see his parents meet –
his father and mother fall in love at first sight when he, a travelling
salesman, visits her remote village in Mexico, and then we see Don Juan as a
young boy being driven by his love of women – and having a mother
with strong sexual morals teach those to him – but who also inadvertently puts him in harm’s way by
having him be instructed in morality by a beauty who is married to a man twice
her age. Ultimately, this woman seduces
the young Don Juan, her husband discovers they are lovers, challenges his
father to a duel, kills his father – Don Juan retaliates by killing the man he
cuckolded. He must now flee – and his
mother states that she has “lost them both in one day.”
Don Juan’s view is also patently absurd. When he goes to sea and his boat is taken
over by pirates and he is bought as a slave and has to sexually service one of
the sultan’s wives by day the other 1500 in the harem by night, we have plunged
into the world of fantasy. What is
intriguing is the detective work that Dr. Mickler does to try to piece together
the elements of this delusional world with what he can glean about the biography
of the kid, born in Queens, who is also sitting with him (along with Don Juan)
each day in his office. One of the
inspired connecting pieces between the two stories (in the alternate version he
was raised in Arizona by the same father who was killed in an automobile
accident right before his mother ran off and he has now returned to Queens to
live with his paternal grandmother) turns on the phrase “lost them both in one
day.” Mickler wonders aloud whether his
mother is referring to losing her husband and her son or losing her husband and
her lover: so that his father’s death
is caused not by the son’s promiscuity, but by that of his mother - whether it was she who had the affair and lost both her husband and her lover on the same day. From the perspective of the son, he may have
chosen to take on the guilt of having directed the sword of the lover to the heart
of his father to avoid feeling the shame of having a mother who is morally
reprehensible.
These two versions of his life that seem to lie right on top
of each other but in fact reach into very different ways of configuring an
internal world seem to say something true about the ways in which we use memory
to reconstruct our lives so that we have lived as heroes rather than as victims
of circumstance – or to suggest that we can
live as heroes as a way of distancing ourselves from the fact that we are
largely victims of circumstance. Wouldn’t
it be preferable to be a noble from a far away country than to be the son of
the Dance King of Astoria – which is the alternate version of his life that Don
Juan’s delusions (partly) protect him from.
What Mickler enacts is a process of bearing the truth of the
less palatable version of his patient's life in a manner that, in turn, helps Don Juan to bear up
under the mantel of that lower truth. He
leaves the hospital cured not by the pills he takes on the last day, but by the
realization that Mickler’s regard for him is real – and that it is a regard
that takes into account both versions of himself. He can return to being the kid from Queens
(whose name I can’t remember) without losing his essential dignity. This allows him to voluntarily cast aside the
mask that he has worn to hide his shame.
This fairy tale is then a too clean description of what we
experience everyday – the “choice” to live our lives according to any one of a
number of narrative themes. In fact we
are likely to shift between many – being at moments lost in daydreams that
include unlimited power, strength, beauty, intelligence or a host of other components
– and drabber, more real, but also more complex, nuanced and guilt or shame
tinged aspects.
Johnny Depp’s real life – one that appears to filled with problematic aspects – seems to be filling the airwaves these days. The star’s lives – lives that have frequently been a focus of interest for us – must be hard to navigate. Johnny Depp’s characters have traditionally had a tilt towards the fabulized – there is a hint of Peter Pan to them. Navigating the reality of moving from a young, lithe movie star like he was in this film to the mature character played by Marlon Brando would take a particular kind of psychological transition – one that we are asked to make in everyday life (we go from being children to being parents or parental figures in what seems like the blink of an eye) and we make that transition with varying degrees of grace. It is as if the young Depp is saying to the old Brando - don't quit being vital and sexy - you still are - as I can be when I am your age. We don't have to grow old. The Brando character is saying, in return, "Thank you for reminding me that I am not dead yet. That said, we are who we are, and I am an old man - one with some grace - but still the mature one - and you should be ready to emulate that."
Johnny Depp’s real life – one that appears to filled with problematic aspects – seems to be filling the airwaves these days. The star’s lives – lives that have frequently been a focus of interest for us – must be hard to navigate. Johnny Depp’s characters have traditionally had a tilt towards the fabulized – there is a hint of Peter Pan to them. Navigating the reality of moving from a young, lithe movie star like he was in this film to the mature character played by Marlon Brando would take a particular kind of psychological transition – one that we are asked to make in everyday life (we go from being children to being parents or parental figures in what seems like the blink of an eye) and we make that transition with varying degrees of grace. It is as if the young Depp is saying to the old Brando - don't quit being vital and sexy - you still are - as I can be when I am your age. We don't have to grow old. The Brando character is saying, in return, "Thank you for reminding me that I am not dead yet. That said, we are who we are, and I am an old man - one with some grace - but still the mature one - and you should be ready to emulate that."
The movie, as Hollywood is want to do, provides a happy
ending. The kid makes the transition to
ordinary boy, but gets to keep the fantasy, too. This may make for a happy box office, but it
leaves something to be desired in modelling how to live a life. The character will now, presumably, be faithful to his Dona Ana, but he will be able to find her and keep her - something that is not possible from the position of being the kid from Queens who was fantasizing about a pin up star. What would it take for Depp to mature into Brando? How mature was Brando? How mature can we become while still having the spark of life alive within us?
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