Reprinted with the permission of The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 42, #2 Summer 2004

Film Essay
Matchstick Men
Psychological Thriller and Therapeutic Paradox
by Arlene Kramer Richards, Ed.D.

A magical place where conflicts are resolved, parents and children reunited and death overcome

Field of Dreams is based on the novel Shoeless Joe, by W. P. Kinsella. It follows the book closely in most respects, although paring down the cast of characters. On the face of it, the plot seems childish. A man plows under his Iowa cornfield to build a baseball field that will call back Shoeless Joe Jackson and other major league baseball players of bygone eras. Nevertheless, a number of adults, not all unsophisticated, were absorbed by the film and moved to tears by its finale.

Syriana confuses the viewer. In the opening scenes, we move rapidly from the middle of the desert, to a Teheran nightclub, to a Georgetown garden, to a board room, to a family breakfast table in Geneva, Switzerland; from a bus loading workmen, to a missile sale, to a man cutting flowers while explaining oil deals, to a corporate argument over a merger, to a young American family eating breakfast. We are continually given snippets of conversation, passed off rapidly. We are introduced to multiple characters, with names thrown around like a juggler’s batons. We struggle in each scene to understand what is going on and in most cases can’t complete the task before we are in the next scene, having to re-assimilate. We are left with an impressionistic flow of visual and auditory stimuli. We can make some sense of it, but are at the same time aware that we are missing important details. One of the film’s earlier titles was “See No Evil”. In fact, we often are not sure what we are seeing.

We cannot literally put Marshal Will Kane on the analytic couch, but he has much in common with a young man who was analyzed by Dr. Arlow.