Nuts

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Given the current revelations about sexual assault and harassment occurring in the world of show business and politics, I decided to analyze this 1987 film which explores warped male actions toward a woman and by doing so reveals a great deal about how many men perceive females.

Martin Ritt was a good choice to direct this motion picture since he explored female empowerment in Norma Rae. This story opens with women herded like cattle in jail cells awaiting arraignment. They are literally incarcerated, but they are also symbolically imprisoned by men for not playing the female roles that men have delineated for them. That digressing from the outwardly appropriate norms of behavior particularly fits the main character, Claudia Draper (Barbra Streisand). She is a high-priced call girl who has been arrested for the first degree manslaughter of one of her clients. As she is led to the courtroom, the male prisoners yell out suggestive remarks, and we see Claudia recalling how she had a visual sexual assessment when she walked through a classy restaurant. The two views show how men, no matter the social situation, universally treat women in a sexually demeaning fashion.

We get a hint of Claudia’s problems with her parents when she demands that the court address her by using her married name, Draper. She is aggressive vocally and argumentative, interrupting preliminary court proceedings and questioning the actions of the expensive lawyer hired by her mother, Rose (Maureen Stapleton) and her stepfather, Arthur Kirk (Karl Malden). The judge and the lawyers ignore her as if she is not to speak unless spoken to. The prosecutor says that the psychiatrist gave the opinion that Claudia is incompetent to stand trial because she doesn’t understand the charges against her and can’t participate in her own defense. What the male-dominated system is doing is preventing her from having her day in court. She does not behave in the proper demure and submissive fashion dictated by the men in charge. Thus, they must remove her from society. She could have continued to perform as a prostitute as long as it wasn’t brought to the attention of polite society. But, as soon as she attacked a male, who was abusive toward her, the situation is brought into the light of day, and the ruling males must then punish her for revealing harmful male tendencies.

Because Claudia would not agree to a charge of criminally negligent homicide, her lawyer argues that she should be considered incompetent. The irony here is that the family and the lawyers appear to want to protect Claudia from having to go to prison. In their minds they are acting in her best interests, but they do so by presupposing that she is not innocent of the crime of which she is accused, but instead proposing that she is mentally unstable. They assume that her lifestyle and nonconformist behavior requires the need to separate her from other “normal” people. Claudia’s response is to punch out her defense attorney.

A public defender by the name of Aaron Levinsky (Richard Dreyfuss) happens to be in court during Claudia’s arraignment. He doesn’t want to have anything initially to do with the case after the assaulted defense lawyer quits. But the judge assigns him to Claudia’s case. After a quick review of the records, and because the judge bullied him into taking the job, he decides to challenge the motion to designate Claudia as incompetent to be tried. On his way to question Claudia at the jail, we see colored lines painted on the floor informing people where to get to different locations. It may appear helpful, but it also shows the linear, regimented thinking of how the established authority enforces control over others. Levinsky runs into the state appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Morrison (Eli Wallach), and verifies that Morrison said in his report that Claudia acted “flagrantly sexual.” This phrase condemns Claudia for breaking the rules that men have established about how a woman should act publicly when it comes to sex. This attitude is affirmed by the Latino psychiatrist who says that Claudia is passionate, which is okay in the bedroom, but not outside of it.

In Levinsky’s first meeting with Claudia, she shows contempt for psychiatrists (although Streisand plays an admirable one in The Prince of Tides). She is initially quiet, but when Levinsky asks if she can talk, she says what role does she want her to play. Should she juggle, dance, do card tricks? She says, “What kind of show do I have to put on for you?” Her statement points to the way men force women to play the roles they dictate for them, as opposed to trying to understand the person behind these fronts. She is basically saying that the traditional expectation of men is to have women amuse and entertain them, which denies who they are as complete persons, with their own personalities and aspirations. Claudia immediately delves into Levinsky’s personal life, asking about being married and if his wife is good in bed. She puts her legs up on the table in front of him and spreads them. In a way, she is exaggerating what men expect of women sexually, and is testing Levinsky to see how he will react. He admits to his sexual inclinations and is not like Morrison, who Claudia sees as sexually inauthentic. Levinsky is honest in his responses about how his marriage has had its problems. Claudia wants to expose how the upright appearances of men are deceiving, because under the veneer of respectability lies the selfish need to objectify and possess women to satisfy lustful urges no matter the damage done to the females they desire. Her argumentative ways and in-your-face- sexual references make the audience uncomfortable, which in a way, indicts the viewer for having accepted the male prescribed norms of how women should behave.

When Levinsky mentions that her mother cares about what happens to her, Claudia curses her mother. We again get an indication that there was something in Claudia’s upbringing that points to Claudia not believing Rose is the motherly protector she seems to be. Despite Claudia’s wanting to put everything out in the open, she is not ready to reveal the secrets about the harm done to her in her childhood. She does win Levinsky over as he concedes the possibility that the psychiatric impression that she is incompetent is wrong. She is then willing to go over her case with him. In a subsequent conversation with the prosecuting attorney, MacMillan (Robert Webber), Levinsky says that he has an aunt who is crazier than Claudia, and she is the president of her PTA. Levinsky is acknowledging Claudia’s argument that supposedly proper behavior can be deceiving. A later scene in the psychiatric ward makes this point as Levinsky is fooled by a woman who is a patient, but who pretends to be a visiting psychoanalyst, and who is more insightful than the “legitimate” psychiatrists. Levinsky says the woman seemed so “normal.” Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Shawshank Redemption, here again we have the inmates making more sense than those in charge. Thus the title of the film may be asking who are the people who are really “nuts.”

We get a scene which reveals Dr. Morrison’s phony pretense of wanting to help Claudia. In a session with her he says that she needs treatment because everyone has impulses, but that society requires that the individual control them. “Control” is the operative word here. His putting her in restraints at various times and sedating her is symbolic of the male urge for domination over the female. At no time does he really try to understand Claudia as an individual with a problematic history. He just wants her to comply with what he sees as the proper female pattern of behavior. She is flirtatious with him in order to try to get him to admit his repression of carnal impulses which surfaces as vindictiveness toward an overtly sexual woman. He says he wants to put “order” in her life, but she says that there is no order in life. She essentially believes that disorder is the norm and people try to impose order on the world. Some overcompensate out of a fear of chaos with that urge to control others (like the character of Beth in Ordinary People?). Claudia suggests that Dr. Morrison is one of those zealous control freaks, and may be why he works in a prison, the idea of putting people in cells being particularly appealing to him.

Levinsky’s visit to Claudia’s apartment is revealing. He sees pictures of her mother, which shows she has not totally written her parent off. She has many books, which indicates her intellectual side. There is also a stuffed animal, implying that she retains a childlike quality, and maybe the wish to recreate a better childhood. There is also a Jack-in-a-box toy, which suggests Claudia’s penchant to surprise others with her blunt nature to upset the status quo, but which shows that there may be a vulnerable, youthful side to her inside. Levinsky goes through her clothing to pick out an outfit for Claudia’s court appearance. He has not asked her permission to go through her things, especially her underwear, and in this way, he is acting like a controlling male. She is angry at him for his transgression. He realizes his mistake, and has the decency to apologize.

Levinsky’s impropriety triggers the memory of the man she killed, Allen Green (Leslie Nielsen), and we get the story of why Claudia was arrested. Allen, who appeared to be upstanding, goes through her clothes, acting as if he owns Claudia because he has purchased her sexual services. He wants to stay after having sex and becomes angry and possessive when she has another appointment. He then is verbally abusive, and says she is acting like his wife. He displays the dual attitudes many men have toward women. On the one hand they want females to act socially respectable in public, as a wife is supposed to appear, but they secretly want them to surrender to masculine sexual manipulation. However, they then condemn them for acting slutty. Allen, like many other men, have created the prostitution business to indulge their sexual fantasies, but are ashamed of their unholy drives, and then project their guilt on the women they sought to indulge them. When Claudia resists Allen, he becomes violent, trying to exert his controlling power, and is angry at being rejected. He tries to strangle Claudia, and in the struggle, the bathroom mirror is broken. Claudia is able to grab a shard, and stabs Allen in the carotid area, killing him (possibly an act of vengeful reverse penetration?).

Claudia’s mother testifies that her husband left them and she married Arthur Kirk around the time that Claudia was five years old. Claudia began to exhibit rebellious behavior, including cutting her hair off (to make herself appear less attractive?), but also being promiscuous. Claudia also stopped wanting to kiss or touch her mother. So, she showed conflicting feelings about wanting affection. Claudia, trying to protect her mother despite her anger toward her, denies Levinsky the chance to question her. When her stepfather takes the stand, he acts like he tried to help the young Claudia get over her fear and vulnerability after being abandoned by her father. He says he tried to reward good behavior by giving her money. Thus we see how little girls are trained to get rewards by acting the way the male role model expects. While Kirk is on the stand, Levinsky sees Claudia making illustrations of people who have no mouths. He quietly says the words “speak no evil.” He knows that despite Claudia’s frankness, she and her family are hiding something. He asks Kirk that if he was what he called himself, Claudia’s “champion,” why did she exhibit what Kirk would consider to be abnormal behavior. Kirk can’t explain it, since he always doted on her, including giving Claudia baths. Levinsky now sees what is going on and presses Kirk on this behavior, and the stepfather becomes very defensive when Levinsky wants to know at what age did the bathing stop. Claudia finally blurts out that it went on until she was sixteen years old. We get flashbacks of young Claudia in the tub showing anxiety as the bathroom door handle turns. Kirk would slip money under the door to let him in. We now see how she was abused as a youth and that the money for sexual favors primed Claudia for a career as a prostitute. Rose says she didn’t know, but Claudia says, “No, you didn’t want to know.” Her mother’s self-denial allowed the abuse because she would not face the ugliness of her husband’s aberration.

Claudia, when she takes the stand, says that women legally prostitute themselves all the time. She knows women who married rich men they disliked so they could drive Mercedes cars. Even though she doesn’t admit it, her mother, Rose, may have married the well-to-do Kirk for financial security. At least Claudia is honest about what she does, and she lists how much she is paid for her sexual acts, making the prosecutor embarrassed, but also intrigued as he does not interrupt her. Claudia thus reveals the hypocrisy of male behavior. Claudia later tells Levinsky that she didn’t stop her stepfather because as a girl she just wanted to be loved. Levinsky tells Claudia not to blame herself. The implication is that all children are vulnerable because they want to be loved.

Levinsky angrily confronts Dr. Morrison who has drugged Claudia because he says, falsely, that it is to calm her. In reality he is trying to undermine Claudia’s testimony by impairing her ability to show that she is competent to stand trial. However, Claudia is able to quote the law and argue that if she is not declared competent to have a trial then the authorities could keep her medically institutionalized indefinitely without her ever being allowed to be acquitted of the charges brought against her. The male condescension of the prosecutor is evident as he assumes he can call her Claudia, but she will have none of that, and insists that he address her as Mrs. Draper (she is divorced, her personality and her upbringing not being conducive to a successful marriage and family life. For example, she says she once had an abortion because “she didn’t believe in childhood.”). MacMillan tries to paint her as a paranoid by trying to get her to admit that there is a conspiracy against her. But Claudia is quite lucid as she says of Dr. Morrison, “I’m sure he believes what he believes. He thinks whores are girls who hang out on 8th Avenue and stick needles in their arms. He knows whores aren’t nice white girls from nice white families.” But women go off and have affairs all the time, while pretending to comply with their proper status as faithful wives in society. Her argument is that because she doesn’t fit into the prejudicial pattern of preconceived notions of which women are relegated to unacceptable female behavior that she must, of course, be a mentally deranged.

While the judge goes out to deliberate, Claudia’s mother shows true emotion and says that she hopes her daughter wins the case. Now when Rose says she loves her daughter, Claudia can see that it is not just a phrase that people say for appearance sake. They are able to hug and show genuine feelings for each other.

The judge, Stanley Murdoch (James Whitmore), is convinced that Claudia understands the charges against her and can participate in her own defense. She is set free until the trial. The last shot is of her walking freely in the streets among the other citizens. She sees one man who has obvious mental problems as he looks up into the sky, talking to himself. The shot stresses the unfairness of a society that would let obviously mentally ill people on the street, but would question a woman’s sanity because she does not conform to the imposed male rules about sexual behavior.

The next film is The Man Who Wasn’t There.

The Prince of Tides

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

This 1991 film is a fitting follow-up to last week’s Rain Man, since this movie, too, deals with people who are emotionally cut off from their feelings, which, in turn, prevents connecting with others on other than a superficial level. In the case of this story, the inability to deal with traumatic memories causes the crippling psychological effects experienced by members of a southern family.

The main character of the film, and its narrator, is Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte in an Oscar-nominated performance). At the start of the movie, we see a beautiful vista of the tidal land where he lived with his brother and sister in South Carolina. Tom’s mother, Lila (Kate Nelligan), is a beautiful woman, who, Tom says, instilled a love of language and an appreciation of nature. His father was a hard-working shrimp fisherman. However, Tom quickly dispels notions of an ideal childhood when he says his father was a violent man, and admits that, although once thinking his mother was extraordinary, “I wasn’t the first son to be wrong about his mother.” He says that he wasn’t sure when his parents “began their war against each other. But, I do know the only prisoners they took were their children.”  His mother thought herself a remarkable woman who deserved a better life than that provided by her husband, and planned on rising above her poor economic standing in the community.

We see the young Tom with his sister Savannah, and his brother Luke as youngsters as they jump into the water together to escape an angry fight between their mother and father. Tom says they submerged themselves to hide from what they feared above on the surface. He says, “We found a silent, soothing world, where there was no pain. A world without mothers or fathers. We would make a circle bound by flesh and blood and water.” Here the liquid world almost symbolizes the amniotic desire to return to the safety of the womb, before having to be born into a world of torment. The circle they formed shows a comforting unity not only with themselves but with nature and, what Tom later calls, its biological clocks ticking all around them. But, this desire to escape the harshness of reality becomes a submersion into the river Lethe, where some of them buried their bad memories. As Tom says of this time that it was all long ago, before he decided not to have a memory.

We first see the adult Tom at his home, but he still carries the childhood scars inflicted by his mother’s disappointment of her family’s lot in life. He still feels the hurt of his mother’s disapproval of his only becoming a coach and a teacher. One can see his point when the first words out of Lila’s mouth when entering her son’s home are, “The shrubs need water.” This insecurity has carried over into his relationship with his wife, Sally (Blythe Danner). She is a doctor, and when she comments about having a hard day, he says it’s tough work “being a saint.” From this line we see his sensitivity to what he has made out of his life. The death of his brother has added an extra sorrow to his world and probably led to his recently losing his job, which makes him feel even more like a failure.

However, instead of openly confronting his problems, Tom hides behind an unfeeling shied of glib remarks. When his wife wants to talk about how distant he has become, that he hasn’t touched her in a long time, he quips that before any discussion involving their relationship, he needs, “a stiff drink,” which stresses the desire to escape emotional confrontation. She says she doesn’t know what he’s thinking, because he doesn’t want to delve into his deepest thoughts. When Sally says she doesn’t know how he feels about her, he jokingly dismisses the problem by saying that she shouldn’t take it seriously since he doesn’t know how he feels about anything. This line emphasizes his way of evading painful thoughts, which then prevents meaningful communication and connecting with someone important in his life.

A visit from Lila interrupts the couple’s discussion when she brings news that Tom’s sister, Savannah (Melinda Dillon), an acclaimed poet living in New York city, has tried to commit suicide again. Tom goes to New York with a feeling of dread because he hates all the things about the city that Savannah loved: the bag ladies; the muggers; the noise; the winos. The author of the novel and screenwriter, Pat Conroy, presents a love-hate relationship with the northern city. While he exposes the prejudicial snobbery of New Yorkers toward southerners, he also says that the city forces one to want to mentally improve oneself. It is also the place where Tom must travel to become whole again. Savannah went to New York because it was the opposite of her life in South Carolina, which she wanted to leave behind. That abandonment entailed blotting out memories, which her psychiatrist, Lowenstein (Barbra Streisand, who should have received an Oscar nomination for her directing here), wants to retrieve. (Interesting that two songs made famous by Streisand deal with memories – “The Way We Were” and “Memory” from the musical Cats). Ironically, she wants Tom to fill in the blanks by being his sister’s “memory,” a difficult task for a person who has tried to forget the ugly events of the past.

Tom is resistant to talk about Savannah’s suicide attempts and is angry that psychiatrists have not been able to help her. Of course, much of that failure has to do with not sharing the Wingo secrets. Savannah’s recent suicide attempt followed the death of Luke. We later find out that he had been fighting a war with the government over wanting to keep some family land. He became violent and was eventually shot by the authorities. In his usual attempt at dealing with emotional trauma, Tom is glib, saying Savannah “had a few bad days about it,” referring to her brother’s death. In order to help his sister, Tom eventually relents and begins to tell family stories. Lowenstein discovers the depth of this family’s dysfunction. His father, Henry (Brad Sullivan), berated Tom as a child about not crying, which instilled an inhibition to show feelings. He was violent with his whole family, but Luke would stand up to him, at one point shooting out the TV so his father would stop watching it and participate in a birthday party. Lila had a stillborn baby, which she said died because the family was “bad,” this statement placing guilt on her children for the loss. Henry, perversely, wrapped it up and placed it in the freezer. Tom found Savannah during the night holding the dead child, rocking it, and saying, “You’re the lucky one.” Lila burned Savannah’s journals because they exposed the family’s ugliness, so the daughter became a poet to put her stories in code. Lila told the psychiatrist that she thus raised her daughter to become a writer. Tom knows that this is a ridiculous credit to take, and points out that his mother raised “a schizophrenic,” and that she should have raised cobras, not children.

Tom illustrates how his parents don’t deal with unsettling feelings. His father didn’t reply to Lowenstein’s telegrams because he felt these types of communication only bring bad news. His mother didn’t come to New York because she was planning a birthday celebration for her second husband, again avoiding the negative situation, although she told Tom that Savannah would probably not want her around.  Tom says it’s the Southern way that when things get too painful, “we either avoid them or we laugh.” As to times when it is appropriate to cry, Tom says, “We don’t.” Lowenstein asks Tom if he cried when Luke died. He says no, it wouldn’t bring him back. She says, “No, but it might bring you back,” emphasizing his need to be made whole again by accessing his emotional side.

Tom discovers a children’s book under a pseudonym that he knows his sister wrote because, even though it is an allegory about the Jewish holocaust, it is based on his family. He angrily confronts Lowenstein because she did not tell him about the book. He then talks about how she along with his wife, who has admitted to having an affair, are like other women, who betray the men in their lives. Lowenstein correctly points out that he feels betrayed by his mother, and that is why he is laying blame on other women. In order to achieve the social advancement she felt she deserved, Lila actually married the wealthy man who once hit Tom for fighting with his son while saying a Wingo was too lowly a person to lay a hand on his child. But, Tom admits that it is hypocritical of him calling women devious, since he was the king of keeping secrets.

Lowenstein’s probings force Tom to confront his past and its associated emotions. At one point Lowenstein says bad memories act like an infected splinter which must come out in order for health to be restored. In addition, Tom’s estrangement from his family provides an incentive to see if dealing with his problems can help him solve his inability to connect with others. Sally sums up Tom’s deficiency when she says she chose the other man she became involved with, “Because he knows how he feels about me.” Lowenstein wants to know why in her children’s book, Savannah chose to depict herself as a holocaust survivor. What horror did she have to survive? When Savannah came out of her attempted suicidal coma, she mentioned the word “Callanwolde.” Tom originally denied knowing what it meant. But, he now tells Lowenstein the horror which led to his sister’s mental illness. The word refers to a prison from which three convicts escaped and subsequently invaded the Wingo home. The father was away, and two of the men raped Savannah and Lila. Tom still tries to hide what happened to him, but Lowenstein gets him to admit that the third convict raped him. Luke was able to get a rifle and killed two of the convicts, while Lila grabbed a knife and killed the other. Lila then compounded the horror by making her children promise not to tell anyone about the attack and forget that it ever happened. They cleaned and buried the bodies, attempting to bury the terror associated with them. This denial of traumatic attacks just surfaces in deranged ways. Trying too hard to make things seem sane when they are not is a type of insanity. A few days later Savannah tried to kill herself for the first time. After telling the story, Tom tries to brush off the impact of the violence by singing, “And that’s what I like about the South.” But, Lowenstein says that he has become so good at hiding his pain, but that little boy inside of him is still hurting. He finally cries in her arms, the tears acting like a cleansing purification of his psychological aching. He considers himself a weak failure in comparison to his sister and brother. But Lowenstein reminds him that his brother was killed and his sister was suicidal and in a hospital. He is alive and unharmed, so she says he must be doing something right. He is Savannah’s twin. It may be that this fact points to the possibility that he could have gone the self-destructive way of his sister, but somehow he had the strength to forge his own way and survive.

He returns home to South Carolina for his child’s birthday (there are several of these celebrations mentioned in the story, perhaps suggesting the possibility of personal resurrection from life’s attempts to destroy us). Tom is now able to admit to Sally that he can be a “closed, defensive son of a bitch.” She seems relieved to see him realize this fact. But, he needs more help working on his issues. He gets it by becoming romantically entangled with Lowenstein. She herself has been in denial about her sad relationship with her husband, Herbert Woodruff (Jaroen Krabbe), a pompous, condescending violin maestro, who is having an affair with his piano accompanist. Tom has helped coach Lowenstein’s son, Bernard (Jason Gould, Streisand’s son), a promising musician, play football. Herbert sees Tom as a Southern hillbilly who is a bad influence on the boy. He humiliates Tom and his wife at a dinner party at their home. Tom gets back at him, making him apologize when he threatens to destroy his Stradivarius. After this event, Lowenstein and Tom have a passionate affair. In an emotional way, they save each other. But, as she says, she loves him because he is the type of man who will return to his wife. When Sally needs him again, he returns to the South, and finds his place in the world as a coach, English teacher, husband and father. The bridge he travels over each day symbolizes how he has been able to connect the different parts of his life into a working whole.

Before he leaves New York, Tom talks to his sister who has been released from the hospital after significant improvement in her condition. She says she is writing a new book to be entitled, The Prince of Tides. She is going to dedicate it to her brother, Tom, her memory. Although it can be painful, dealing with the past allows for healing.

The next film is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.