Can movies be a form of medicine?

I watched Blue is the Warmest Colour at the end of 2013. I was heart­bro­ken and realised – tru­ly realised – that my life, like Adèle’s, would car­ry on, and I would find oth­er pas­times beyond con­tem­plat­ing a yawn­ing, pain-filled abyss. There are a scat­ter­ing of mag­i­cal expe­ri­ences like this one, in which a film’s wis­dom and one’s own psy­cho­log­i­cal state syn­er­gise into a momen­tous surge of mean­ing. These expe­ri­ences are when films help you to process life and move you gen­tly along the road.

It’s not always this way. As with any habit, movies can be used med­i­c­i­nal­ly to heal, but also abused by addicts des­tined to live out their days marked with the tell-tale signs: a pal­lid com­plex­ion, dark eye­bags and an inabil­i­ty to calm­ly talk with oth­ers. Peo­ple can binge on films at the cost of more thought­ful and chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties. Peo­ple can get lost in a hall of mir­rors (The Lady From Shang­hai-style) miss­ing a film’s con­nec­tion to your or another’s expe­ri­ences and see­ing only oth­er movies. This is a ​‘fun house’ peo­pled by crit­ics, cinephiles and oth­er cit­i­zens of the world who find over­whelm­ing lev­els of solace, stim­u­la­tion and life lessons up there on the flick­er­ing screens. And while a res­i­den­cy in those pic­ture palaces may lead to great, spe­cialised knowl­edge, will it real­ly help us to progress with the impor­tant stuff?

Two releas­es from the sec­ond half of 2015 zero in on char­ac­ters with obses­sive rela­tion­ships to films. The Angu­lo boys in Crys­telle Moselle’s The Wolf­pack grew up under vir­tu­al house arrest with movies as a lone win­dow on the world. It is strik­ing – as Adam Wood­ward points out in his review – that the boys are remark­ably well-adjust­ed for an unso­cialised brood. It is tempt­ing to cred­it their rel­a­tive nor­mal­cy to the films they’ve been watch­ing and reen­act­ing. As one of the Angu­lo boys notes: films are often about out­siders – like him. Any­one who has ever felt social­ly awk­ward can under­stand the lure of press­ing a few but­tons and con­jur­ing up a world that cher­ish­es a com­plex iden­ti­ty unlike the whirl­wind that is wider soci­ety. By sim­ply look­ing, you can feast on the com­posed sto­ry­telling of genius­es, rather than take your chances with the non­sen­si­cal chaos that rules outside.

In Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the lead char­ac­ter, Greg, (Thomas Mann) is infat­u­at­ed with watch­ing and remak­ing clas­sic movies. These are movies like The Red Shoes, Peep­ing Tom and Ver­ti­go, movies that deal in the heady pas­sions of life and death, fear and love. Greg’s remakes are uni­form­ly puerile (The Rad Shoes, Poop­ing Tom, Vere’d He Go?, etc) but the fact that he has engaged with bril­liant sources should, accord­ing to a cer­tain log­ic, ele­vate him to a sophis­ti­cat­ed plane of human understanding.

It’s absolute­ly not so. Where his own exis­tence is con­cerned, Greg is guard­ed and keeps to the side­lines. When a real prob­lem – also a com­mon­place movie hap­pen­ing – occurs and he’s forced to the bed­side of a dying girl, Greg is dumb­found­ed. He reveres Wern­er Her­zog and his phi­los­o­phy that ​“nature is chaos, hos­til­i­ty and mur­der” yet sto­ical exis­ten­tial­ism has not seeped into his heart and mind. (Where has it seeped?) It’s almost as if film-watch­ing is no prepa­ra­tion or assis­tant in the mat­ter of real life. It’s almost as if film-watch­ing is an escapist past-time or, at best, a charm­ing passion.

So what to do when life sug­gests that you step up and con­tribute some­thing of use? A few cinephile ref­er­ences might buy you time but they’re not going to ease the suf­fer­ing of a dying girl. For this, we need kind­ness, com­pas­sion, under­stand­ing and all of the oth­er emo­tion­al resources that don’t grow mus­cu­lar in the dark of a cin­e­ma. Greg’s arc involves him learn­ing how to be there for Rachel. He learns this by rou­tine­ly show­ing up in her life, not from stick­ing on Bur­den of Dreams for anoth­er watch and los­ing him­self in rever­ies. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is, of course, only a movie. Real life rarely offers such clearcut chances to redeem one’s anti­so­cial ten­den­cies. Real life is steered by our own hands, not by a moral­ly cer­tain moth­er forc­ing you round to a dying girl’s house to achieve per­son­al growth. Life is all too vague and ephemer­al. Pass me anoth­er DVD.

There is a throw­away moment in The Wolf­pack in which one of the Angu­lo boys cred­its their moth­er with keep­ing crazi­ness at bay. In con­trast with their large­ly hid­den father, Susan has been a qui­et, but almost noble back­ground pres­ence in the doc­u­men­tary. It sud­den­ly seems like­ly that this flesh and blood human is the one who has pre­vent­ed these cap­tive kids from becom­ing unhinged. Maybe re-enact­ing Quentin Taran­ti­no movies isn’t such a sta­bil­is­ing force after all.

To answer the ques­tion of the title, at their best, films can offer soul sus­te­nance, edu­ca­tion and stim­u­lat­ing past-times to those in tight spots. But once it’s The End, to tru­ly process life – nar­ra­tive­ly clunky and dubi­ous­ly char­ac­tered as we are – we need each other.