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Représentation cinématographique des deuils pathologiques

2013; Elsevier BV; Volume: 171; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.amp.2013.01.021

1769-6631

J.-G. Veyrat, Adama Boulanger-Dufour,

Death, Funerary Practices, and Mourning

Through the examples of seven films (three French, two British, two American) carried out from 1967 to 2004, we analyze some mechanisms of coping, which differ according to a man, a woman, or some children after a death. Some of those mechanisms can be useful as a defence against a deep breakdown succeeding to the loss of a husband, a wife, a parent, a child. Some examples of those mechanisms are: (i) the hallucination of a ghost, in The ghost and Mrs Muir, helping her to understand that she did not love really her husband, and that she was able to write a book as a man like the “Captain Clegg”; (ii) the hallucination of his dead wife, in Tous les matins du monde, helping this “viole de gambe” player to compose and to play again; (iii) the hallucination of the voice of their dead mother, in Our mother's house buried by her seven children in the garden to avoid being sent to orphanage, helping them to find a new organization of their family; (iv) the big increase of weight of the mother left with four children, staying night and day in her armchair located above the beam used by her husband for hanging without explanation, in What's eating Gilbert Grape; (v) the rapid change in psychological behaviour of a widow after the sudden death of her husband, in the film The mother moving fast from a melancholy to a maniac sexual excitation; (vi) her deep grief moving into an obsessional impulse for murdering five men which overflows the bride in the film La mariee etait en noir; (vii) the obsessive compulsive desire to keep the memory of his dead wife and of all his dead friends in a single place: a small chapel, in the film La chambre verte. What are the “good defence” as well as the “bad defence” is discussed, as shown in the films. Hallucinations and compulsions appear useful for recovering from the inhibition of a deep breakdown. Alternately, increased weight and psychological behaviour reversal appear as poor defences in some cases. A mandatory issue has to be pointed out: the death has to be real and explicable.