Last month, I posted on twinship fantasies in The Prestige, in memory of Jules Glenn. The Road to Perdition, a film that came out a few years ago, also focuses on brothers.

From the PANY Bulletin, Summer, ’08

I am certain that I am far from the only member of PANY/NYUPI who was deeply saddened at hearing that Jules Glenn had died. Jules was not merely a revered teacher and a major contributor to psychoanalysis, he was a naturally warm and friendly man who took a genuine interest in people. I took classes with him as a candidate at the NYU Institute and later attended many discussion groups and seminars with him as a faculty member. He was always friendly, down to earth, “hamish”.

A quiet stranger came into town one day . . .

Every now and then in practice, we see a patient who captures our attention with a dramatic childhood memory within the first few visits; then, defenses set in and the treatment settles into a focus upon the external details of day to day life until something triggers the return of the repressed memory.  Billy Bob Thornton’s film, Sling Blade, is like such a patient.

How do films evoke an identification with one character as opposed to another? Two recent films, The Bourne Ultimatum and No Country for Old Men give us a character who appears to be indomitable, almost supernaturally in control. Both of these characters are professional killers who leave a trail of bodies behind them. Yet we react to them very differently. Jason Bourne is a hero whom we admire and wish to identify with whereas the relentless murderer, Anton Chigurh, in No Country is a bogeyman, a nightmarish figure whom we fear but do not identify with. He may unconsciously act out our most extreme aggressive fantasies, but we tend to place him in our representational world as an external object.

Filmmakers usually allow us to identify with a hero or dis-identify with a villain by manipulating their circumstances and motives. Jason Bourne kills those who attack him. He defends women. Although he is relatively unexpressive, we are led to feel that he can be kind and empathic. He is fighting a cruel system that has made him into a killer by using and corrupting his idealism. The killer in No Country is motivated by greed and self need only, killing people because they get in his way, although observing an odd idiosyncratic moral code.

However, a third character, from another recent film provides us with a model that stands on the prism point between these two archetypes, an object with whom we both wish to identify and fear as an external threat to our moral integrity. I am referring to Ben Wade, the charismatic outlaw, played by Russell Crowe, in 3:10 to Yuma.