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Sullivan's Travels Rating: ☺☺☺☺☺ 5 smiley faces! This is my first movie review. I found this movie referenced in an article in the British medical journal called The Lancet. It is the British equivalent of the New England Journal of Medicine, some think it is better than the New England Journal of Medicine, and I would agree. The British certainly have more of a focus on the arts and connecting artistic endeavor to medicine, which is very refreshing. This is an old black and white movie. It stars Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, and is directed by Preston Sturges. This is at one level a fascinating movie about what life and movie making wwere like at the end of the great depression and just prior to world war II. The movie seems particularly pertinent to our current era of economic upheaval in 2010. The basic plot is of a wealthy successful movie director who is tired of making fluffy movies for consumption by the public. He wants to do something important and meaningful. He sets out to accomplish this by thrusting himself into the "lower" realms of society. Unfortunately, his producers and supporters can't let him do this without trying to film, document, and report on the whole endeavor, and a media circus ensues. It's not until he meets a beautiful young aspiring actress who is at the end of her rope and about ready to return home with nothing to show for her efforts trying to break into the Hollywood scene, that he gains an introduction to the lower realms of society. Through her guidance he begins to discover what he could not find otherwise. The plot of course thickens when his anger overcomes him and he kills a man and ends up in prison alone, penniless, without his identity and he must work his way through this situation to survive. There is a much deeper plot being worked out in this movie. This movie presents us with a middle-aged man, successful and prosperous, but being confronted with the middle-aged angst of asking oneself, "is there something more". We see him struggling with his sense that life is not complete somehow. He seems to be missing something very important. This is the fundamental struggle of mid-life. The personality feels incomplete and there is this need to discover other parts of the self that have been hidden and buried away from conscious awareness. The conscious personality is unable to accomplish this task on its own. A tumultuous time in life can result from this situation. Carl Jung is one of the few theorists and practitioners to describe this life task in detail. Many others have have expanded on it, and I would highly recommend James Hollis's book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up, which, so far, in my reading, may be the best discussion of mid-life. Our protagonist is casting about trying to get down into the unconscious realm of himself and society. Ultimately, his entrée into this realm will be through what Carl Jung calls an anima figure. Beauty seems timeless, and I suspect most would agree that Veronica Lake is quite lovely, even in black and white. According to Jung, the anima is a symbolic figure found in our dreams that acts as the connector of the soul to the world of God beyond our conscious awareness. The anima is often a rather beautiful and attractive feminine image in the male unconscious and dream world. Our hero is unable to get in contact with the unconscious realm of his self or of society without this connection. We watch as the anima figure introduces him to what he cannot find without her help. The feminine part of him rises up to help him find the compassion, mercy, concern, and fortitude to go deeply into the unconscious realms of himself and society. Eventually, he manages to drop full force into the realm of his unconscious as symbolized by committing a murder and ending up in prison. He must then work his way back, ultimately balancing out all of these societal experiences and personality issues. This is a superb film. It is probably over looked by many. You can view this from a literal standpoint, from the historical perspective, or you can see it for the wonderful description of a man at mid-life trying to bring his life into balance. This movie is a superb cinema experience when viewed from these various perspectives and can make for great discussions and reflection. I highly recommend it. Curtis Climer All opinions are mine and
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