The Film
The film opens with the arrival of Edward (Tom
Hiddleston), by helicopter, on Tresco, where he is met by his
mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard). The
back story slowly unfolds as we learn that Edward, who is in his
late twenties, has left his well paid city job and is soon to
travel to Africa where he will work as a volunteer for eleven
months, helping to teach sexual health within communities afflicted
by AIDs. He outlines his need for a purpose in life but gradually
reveals his uncertainty about whether he has actually made the
right decision. Cynthia, his older sister, is critical of his
choice and shows her resentment of his freedom to travel abroad in
this way. Patricia, their mother, has arranged this farewell get
together in a rented holiday home that they visited many times when
Edward and Cynthia were young and where they all seem to recall
fond memories. However, the full family reunion fails to take place
as time passes and Patricia’s husband doesn’t arrive. We feel his
distant presence only through phone calls that he makes to Patricia
and Cynthia, in which Patricia becomes increasingly frustrated and
let down by his absence at her longed for gathering. As his
father’s failure to show up becomes more certain, Edward voices
several critical and disrespectful comments about him, revealing
their lack of closeness.
The two other significant characters in this drama
are the cook, Rose, who has been hired to look after the culinary
needs of the family during the holiday and Christopher an artist
and friend who is engaged in teaching Patricia and Cynthia
painting. The real life artist, Christopher Baker, describes his
painting process as a need to find the chaos in representation
while he resists exercising too much control, something Patricia
openly acknowledges is hard for her to do. In contrast to the
extremely controlling attitudes of both Patricia, her absent
husband, and Cynthia, Christopher becomes a proxy father figure to
the ‘hen pecked’, over compliant Edward as he tries to reflect on
the meaning and purpose of his own life.
Rose, the paid cook, attracts the attention of
Edward, who tries to treat her as an equal, in a way that brings
criticism from both Patricia and Cynthia, as he befriends her and
wants her to join the family at mealtimes, blurring the boundary of
employer and employee. The ensuing debate gives rise to one
especially embarrassing scene, in which we feel Rose’s discomfort
acutely. However, we also learn that Rose’s father died suddenly in
an accident a few years earlier and she, her mother and her
sisters, have only just ‘emerged from the coma’ of grief that they
were in. In an attempt to include Rose, the family invite her and
Christopher to lunch at a hotel, empty at this time of year, where
Cynthia creates a scene by complaining about her food, whilst the
rest of the group remain mostly silent. Her growing anger and
frustration is later released in a row at the house, but the real
feeling of equilibrium only returns to the group when Patricia
loses her temper with her husband on the phone just before the end
of the holiday.
Relevance to the field of Mental Health
Archipelago is not a film that portrays overt mental
illness, rather it seeks to give us an insight in to the complex
origins of the problems that may drive someone to seek
psychotherapy of some form. Cynthia’s unhappiness, irritability and
seeming dissatisfaction with her self and the world, suggests that
she might benefit from a psychological treatment. The film is so
skillful at involving the viewer in the family’s interactions that
it would definitely offer a great platform to discuss the role of
unconscious motivations, inner conflicts and defence mechanisms
that form the basis of psychoanalysis
and the approach taken by psychoanalytic psychotherapy, described
on the information pages of the British
Association of Psychotherapists.
For a broader consideration of psychological
therapies, a reading of the Royal College of Psychiatry
factsheet on Psychotherapies could form the basis
of a discussion on the whole variety of treatments that might be of
use to the various characters in Archipelago were they to
seek help. I would strongly recommend this film to anyone
interested in, or actually working as a psychotherapist with
individuals or families.
For anyone interested in a further psychoanalytic
exploration of films, The Institute of
Psychoanalysis is currently showing a series of films and
discussions called ‘Screening
Conditions’, which takes place on Sunday mornings, at The
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Further information about
all of the Institute’s events examining the relationship between
psychoanalysis and the arts is available at http://www.beyondthecouch.org.uk/
.
• More information about Archipelago
can be found at IMDB as
can a short
trailer.
• The DVD can be purchased at
amazon.co.uk
• Minds on Film is written by Consultant
Psychiatrist, Dr Joyce Almeida.
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