by Alyce Barry – 

I missed Seabiscuit when it was in the theatres last summer. Not too surprising, since I was selling my house, sending my daughter off to college, and moving across the country.

The truth is, I often miss the big blockbusters because the hype puts me off, and the ads for Seabiscuit were everywhere.

A few weeks ago, I saw the DVD at the video store, and rented it. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve seen it three times, bought the DVD, and watched all the special features. At one point, I thought to myself, I didn’t think I’d like a movie about horseracing this much.

And I realized, it isn’t actually a movie about horseracing.

WHY IT’S SO POPULAR

I think that’s why some film critics are surprised the movie was nominated for Best Picture. Roger Ebert mentioned the movie’s “curious indifference to betting,” which is, of course, horseracing’s reason for being. On NPR, Scott Simon and sports commentator Ron Rapoport wondered aloud about the nomination since, as Rapoport put it, “it didn’t really capture that great racetrack nitty-gritty in Laura Hillenbrand’s wonderful book.” At the New York Times‘ online movie review page, several people mentioned that the movie needed more scenes about racing.

ABOUT ACCEPTANCE

Seabiscuit is actually a movie about acceptance. About how acceptance turns a life around, how it motivates us, and how it leads us in directions we can’t even imagine, to achieve success we never dared dream of, and how it makes us capable of accepting others in turn. The movie just happens to be set against a backdrop of horseracing.

I don’t want to say too much more in case you haven’t seen the movie yet. But I will mention one scene which shows one character accepting another energetically — with looks, and touch, and very few words.

Seabiscuit’s jockey, Red Pollard — who was abandoned by his family and grew up angry — comes to the horse’s owner, Charles Howard, to ask for money so he can see a dentist.

“I need ten dollars,” Pollard says, “and I don’t know when I can pay you back.” His request is a challenge, to see just how far he can go.

Howard stands up, puts a hand on Pollard’s shoulder, looks Pollard in the eyes, hands him a twenty dollar bill, and says, “That’s fine.”

He says, without words, It’s okay that you need ten dollars. It’s okay that you don’t know when you can pay me back. And when you ask for ten dollars, I’ll give you twenty.

Acceptance flows from what in Shadow Work we call the Sovereign part of us. The scene between Pollard and Howard comes closer to the Sovereign blessing exercises we do in Shadow Work than any scene in any film that comes to mind. And the impact on Pollard is immediate and astounding.

THE DVD COMMENTARY

If you have a chance to see the DVD, check out the director’s commentary. Seabiscuit‘s director, Gary Ross, discusses the film with his friend and fellow director Steven Soderbergh, and they talk almost exclusively about the characters and the feel of the film. In fact, they keep pausing the movie so they can talk more without being rushed. Now that’s what I call a commentary.

Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of  Practically Shameless, available in paperback and on audio CD and as an e-book.

This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in March 2004. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.

Back to the Articles Menu.

by Alyce Barry – 

Munich is director Steven Spielberg’s film about the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics where Palestinian terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes in Munich, Germany.

Based on George Jonas’s book, Vengeance, the film tells of the Israeli government’s secret team of assassins given the job of hunting down the perpetrators. The team leader is Avner, played by Eric Bana.

Munich is an important film, I think, for what it says about what killing does to you inside — the real toll that revenge takes on a human being.

IT’S NOT EASY

I remember reading in a biography of Alfred Hitchcock that he made a point of showing in his films that it wasn’t easy to commit murder — for a simple reason, namely, that the human body doesn’t die that easily. Hitchcock believed it was his moral duty to show how difficult murder really is, as it was to ensure that no murderer in any of his films got away with his crime.

Spielberg’s real accomplishment in Munich is showing that it isn’t easy to kill a person for emotional reasons either. Throughout the film, the assassins unexpectedly meet their targets as ordinary people who are really quite likable. You can see it pass across their features that they must avoid seeing their targets as likeable because that will make it much harder to kill them. With each of these meetings, Spielberg is showing us, Here the assassin has a choice to know his target as a person and be merciful.

At the beginning of the film, news footage shows what the world saw of the events inside the Olympic Village, which wasn’t much. The rest of the 1972 events are told through reconstructions. When the terrorists reached the Furstefeldbrook airport, where they thought they were getting a flight to safety, the German authorities opened fire on them instead.

For me, one of the film’s most lasting images is the face of one of the terrorists when he realizes that it’s his job to kill the hostages seated inside the helicopter. It’s clear he hadn’t planned on this. He can’t look at the athletes’ faces for more than a moment because he knows if he does, he won’t be able to kill them. You see him switching off his humanity so that he can follow orders.

A FELT SENSE

There’s something unusual about the gunfights in Munich as well, in the way bullets strike bodies, and the way the bodies react to being shot. I don’t normally watch films with a lot of gratuitous violence, so it’s possible that I’m just out of touch with bullets in movies today.

The gunfights in Munich aren’t gratuitous, they’re central to Spielberg’s point: that violence becomes pointless. Listening to the bullets striking bodies, I had a felt sense of Spielberg’s message. He uses bullets to tattoo on his audience his message about the pointlessness of vengeance.

HOME NO MORE

The turning point of the film comes when Avner persuades his Israeli contact to allow the assassins to travel to Lebanon where an important terrorist is staying. In the horrific gun battle that ensues, I felt suddenly annoyed that I couldn’t tell who was who — where were Avner and his men, and where were their enemies? I realized that Spielberg didn’t want me to know because it didn’t matter. The killing had become killing for killing’s sake, and it no longer mattered which side you were on.

For Avner, Lebanon is a turning point of another kind as well. He kills not just the men on his most-wanted list but a young Palestinian man he has just met. They’ve shared a conversation while smoking a cigarette outdoors. The young Palestinian tells Avner that if the Palestinians act like animals, it is because their treatment by the Israelis has made them animals. When Avner learns not longer after that he, too, is being hunted, it’s clear that he is now an animal as well. He is a hunted, haunted man who can no longer rest, much less feel at peace. No one in this conflict has a home any more.

Spielberg might have told a simplistic, black-and-white story in which the Israelis are heroes and the Palestinians are evil. Instead, he has told a complex story about the killer inside all of us.

Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of  Practically Shameless, available in paperback and on audio CD and as an e-book.

This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in February 2006. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.

Back to the Articles Menu.

by Marie-Françoise Rosat and Alyce Barry – 

AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
Review by Marie-Françoise Rosat – 

This wonderful picture, made in Sweden, tells the story of a music conductor who has a heart attack and decides to go back to the small village where he was brought up.

Since childhood, he’s been looking for “the music that can open people’s hearts.” When he arrives in this little town, he is invited to be the conductor of a small church choir.

As soon as this charismatic man starts leading the group, all kinds of emotions, feelings and behaviors come to the surface from everybody: hate, jealousy, being a victim, envy, but also love, admiration and compassion. The choir becomes almost like a Shadow Work container, where everyone has the space to live his emotions!

When I left the cinema, I was crying tears of relief and felt more connected to life and to myself. The film’s score is also beautiful.

I loved this film and have seen it twice, have recommended it to lots of people around me and all of them loved it as well. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for 2004 and was voted audience favorite at the 2005 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Marie-Françoise Rosat is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach living in Munich, Germany. Read more about Marie-Françoise. [Editor’s note: The film is not yet available in the United States. Americans who use Netflix can “save” this film to their wish list and send the message that there’s a market for it here.]

OFF THE MAP
Review by Alyce Barry

Many films tell the story of a protagonist who brings profound change into the lives of others. As It Is In Heaven (above) is one example. Others include Back to the Future, in which Marty McFly changes the lives of his parents, and Babe, in which a young pig uproots the long-held prejudices on a sheep farm.

It’s less common that the story goes the other way, and a protagonist embraces the extraordinary lifestyle of others and the change that it brings. Off the Map is one such film.

It’s a story about an eccentric family living off the land in northern New Mexico. The father (played by Sam Elliott) has been depressed for six months, the mother (Joan Allen) gardens in the nude, and their 12-year-old daughter is ready for grand larceny. Into their midst comes William Gibbs, a young, newly-hired IRS agent who’s been sent to do an audit. He gets stung by a bee and falls in love, first with the nude gardener and then with the land and his own possibilities. The viewer falls in love with Gibbs as his story unfolds and his life transforms. It’s a movie about people living in an entirely different way than most of us do, off the map, off the grid, and not caring how unusual it looks to others.

I REMEMBER MAMA
Review by Alyce Barry

You might think it odd that I’m recommending a film made in 1948. I only saw this film for the first time a few weeks ago.

It’s one of the most skillfully crafted movies I’ve seen in a long time. What I love most is its title character, a woman with a very healthy, balanced Warrior. Unlike the Warrior heroines in today’s movies, though, this woman doesn’t have to wield a gun, much less shoot multiple rounds while falling sideways as a building explodes in the background.

This woman merely sets boundaries, in as clean and truthful a way as I’ve ever seen in a film. She uses both sides of her Warrior, too, going to great lengths to protect her children as well as to insist that they get what they need.

Based on a book by her daughter, the story takes place in 1910 in San Francisco, where Marta Hanson and her husband Lars, both born in Norway, are raising their four children. They are members of an extended family with old-world values, where Marta’s sister must get permission from the male head of the family in order to get married and where her suitor can expect a dowry.

But it’s also a family in which the parents listen to their children and take their needs seriously. Where parents and children express and speak of their feelings openly. Where the parents care a great deal about telling their children the truth and refuse to break a promise. Where the family spends the evenings listening to the classics read aloud and, at a time when every penny counts, values the experience more than money. Where the parents openly show their approval for a son who wants to attend high school and who have an initiation of sorts for a daughter who’s growing up.

There are wonderfully funny moments, too, most of them thanks to an uncle who is the perfect Enneagram Eight.

Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of  Practically Shameless, available in paperback and on audio CD and as an e-book.

This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in March 2006. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.

Back to the Articles Menu.

by Alyce Barry – 

I like watching movies. I don’t call myself a “film buff” because that seems to imply more knowledge than I have about foreign and independent film. [Read more…]

by Alyce Barry – 

When the film “The King’s Speech” was in theatres, I heard from a colleague that it showed a therapist using some unusual techniques that weren’t all that different from Shadow Work®. So I watched it with eagerness, and I enjoyed it immensely.  [Read more…]