note: all star ratings have to do with whether I think the story told is a realistic portrayal. In fact, all reviews are about covering issues related to abuse, scapegoating, toxic family portrayal, alcoholic family portrayal, substance abuse family portrayal, children from abusive families and their experiences, and how effective that portrayal is, not about how effective the movie-making is, or the set design, or production, directing and acting. I leave those concerns to other writers and reviewers. I don't even cover whether I would recommend the movie to others based on my likes and dislikes; I only recommend movies that I think will open people's eyes as to how survivors of abuse live in the world.
This page contains reviews for:
Good Will Hunting
The Tudors (series)
The Tudors (series)
Good Will Hunting
(written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, directed by Gus Van Sant)
According to Wikipedia, "Good Will Hunting" is a:
a 1997 American drama film, directed by Gus Van Sant, and stars Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgård. Written by Affleck and Damon (and with Damon in the title role), the film follows 20-year-old South Boston laborer Will Hunting, an unrecognized genius who, as part of a deferred prosecution agreement after assaulting a police officer, becomes a client of a therapist and studies advanced mathematics with a renowned professor. Through his therapy sessions, Will re-evaluates his relationships with his best friend, his girlfriend and himself, facing the significant task of confronting his past and thinking about his future.
REVIEW:
As Roger Ebert said in this movie review:
The movie was co-written by Damon and Affleck, who grew up in Boston, who are childhood friends, and who both took youthful natural talents and used them to find success as actors. It's tempting to find parallels between their lives and the characters--and tempting, too, to watch the scenes between Damon and Driver with the knowledge that they fell in love while making the movie.
The story is about a genius, Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), and how he gradually works towards self actualization. This self actualization comes about in therapy with counselor Sean Mcguire (played by Robin Williams). That is the basis of the story, but it takes time to get there.
Will Hunting is a great example of learned helplessness (which I will discuss in a blog post, but the premise is that if you chain a child to a room and take the chains off and open the door, the child often stays in the room). Survivors of abuse typically struggle with it. He also has classic attachment disorder (again reserved for another post).
Will Hunting's childhood is marked with severe abuse and he is eventually abandoned to an orphanage. He is also a victim of poverty.
When the movie opens he is a janitor at M.I.T. and he solves mathematical problems that are left on a blackboard by professor Lambeau (played by Stellan Skarsgard) for students to solve. Will is the only one to solve them satisfactorily, and in fact, he proves to be more adept at math than the professor.
The professor takes an interest in Will just in the nick of time: when Will is spiraling down into a life of crime. The professor saves Will from that life, promising that he'll help Will by nurturing his mathematical skills and getting him therapy.
Will is highly resistant to therapy at first because he sees nothing wrong with his own perspectives and defenses. They worked for him most of his life in the rough-and-tumble world of South Boston. He sees nothing wrong with being a janitor and brick-layer, swigging beers with his friends, and getting into fights with other gangs.
But the problem is that he's a genius, and his four friends and the folks who are trying to help him at M.I.T. insist on him "graduating" from the life of blue collar work. He tries to resist as long as he can, and part of that resistance has to do with why he has a hard time rehabilitating from his old ways of coping emotionally and psychologically. He can't bring himself to say that he loves a woman that he is crazy about and can't stop thinking about (a Harvard student from England played by Minnie Driver). And when push comes to shove, he can't allow himself to love (and risk being hurt again), so he gives up on the relationship with her. It is a heartbreaking scene.
He also gives up on working for the NSA and other job offers he receives to cling to his attitudes, old blue collar occupations, and his old life as a tough guy from South Boston. He seems totally resistant to change his ways for anyone or anything.
It isn't until his best friend, Chuckie (played by Ben Affleck), says to Will: “You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket. It would be an insult to us if you're still around here in 20 years.” He also tells Will that he'll kill him if he insists on working at construction sites doing manual labor.
Giving up on relationships and intimacy when you have had a childhood of acute abuse, parental neglect and parental abandonment is common and "normal", considering the circumstances. So that is realistic and believable. It is also possible to become actualized and open to love through vulnerability in therapy, though for most children of abuse and abandonment the road is much, much longer and harder than is portrayed here, with many steps backwards. Some clients never quite make it because the learned helplessness is so ingrained.
The reliance on the therapist to provide what a parent should provide to his child (self esteem, appreciation of differences in others, acceptance, understanding, good coping abilities, ethics, empathy, morality, being a good citizen, being a good sibling, being a good husband or wife, and being a good parent) is all too common, and more or less missing in the movie. All of the missing pieces of "It's not your fault; you're lovable; you're acceptable -- and how about treating others with love and respect and opening yourself up to being vulnerable?") have to be "built" brick by brick, and year by year, by a therapist.
Will seems to bond with McGuire, but being able to wean oneself off of therapy is usually a lot more difficult than is portrayed here, just because the parents never taught anything beyond abuse and rejection, and therapists have a lot to teach that is compassionate, deep and transcendental. The only way to suspend disbelief about Will's ability to "get it" so early in the process is that he is a genius, able to learn fast (thus one reason for the 4 star rating; if Will wasn't a genius, my rating would be more like 3 and a half stars).
While this movie features healing from child abuse and parental abandonment, it isn't just about that. Half of the movie is about coming-of-age as a genius and how he deals with it: math problems are easy compared to manual labor, love comes by impressing through bull-shitting and great knowledge of facts (and beating out the competition, the competitor being a college student), smart girls are more interesting, and other kinds of messages. For a survivor these might dilute what is important here: how to survive and transcend childhood abuse and abandonment. If only geniuses can do it, it is a depressing message for the rest of survivors.
The feel-good ending of the movie was a little too "Hollywood" for me, but I can understand why it was done that way. Why would the audience want to be left in suspense, or go through more of a long drawn out process of therapy, or have a character who couldn't quite get his mind and emotions behind believing that his parent's abuse was never his fault (especially when the abuse was so severe, and the abandonment so "fixed"), or be left with an ending with a survivor who couldn't change? But sometimes that is the problem with Hollywood movies: the truth about these kinds of situations are often a lot more messy, without a real ending.
As I have suggested in so many other reviews I have done, the door is open for a longer look (perhaps a mini series) about a client who is not a genius, but still manages to transcend his upbringing anyway:
1. that abuse is never, and was never his fault
2. that recovery is a long process (all of the bad messages of abusive parents need reprogramming)
3. that having a relationship with an adult child who has endured child abuse and abandonment can be a difficult process of almost saintly compassion, understanding and on-going commitment. A survivor's ability to trust will be deeply compromised, especially if he is being "used" by other people again at work or other areas of his life
4. that being a child of parental abuse, neglect and abandonment is much more traumatic than most people realize, and it isn't just a matter of "Can't you just get over it??" (potential partners who have grown up with loving parents have the most difficult time understanding)
5. that chronic PTSD is most often the result of adult children who have been abused by parents, and that recovering from PTSD is also a long process, even under the most optimal calm conditions
more reading:
What Good Will Hunting Teaches Us About Men, Shame, and Suicide -- A Good Men Project article by Makala Kozo Hattori
Supplemental Materials For Good Will Hunting, Attachment Theory Applied to "Good Will Hunting" -- from the Teach with Movies website
REVEALING YOUR HERO’S WOUND: Good Will Hunting -- by Michael Hauge
Roger Ebert's entire review
videos:
by psychologist, Dr. Todd Grande,
"Good Will Hunting | Analysis of Counseling Scenes":
The Tudors (series)
(created by Michael Hirst)
I have chosen this series, and King Henry the Eighth as the best portrayal of an abuser because most portrayals (as in "Sleeping with the Enemy", "Thelma and Louise" and others) show perpetrators who are too one-dimensional for my tastes, and usually not-so-likable. The truth is that most abusers come off as even more charming and likable than your typical empath ... at first.
Furthermore, in these kinds of movies, abuse is levied almost all of the time at the victims, without showing how a victim gets sucked in, and the idealization stage, which can sometimes last years.
In fact, Henry VIII idealized Anne Boleyn for at least 7 years before he got sick of her and wanted her out of his life.
I did cover one other series about someone with antisocial personality disorder in the mirroring post (Malcolm Webster), which is the best portrayal I have seen with that particular disorder. But it still doesn't show how generous abusers can be, how ingratiating they can be, how they can turn on a dime, and who they generally surround themselves with in order to get the most out of others, thus Henry VIII.
According to Wikipedia:
The Tudors is a historical fiction television series set primarily in sixteenth-century England, created by Michael Hirst and produced for the American premium cable television channel Showtime. The series was a collaboration between American, British, and Canadian producers, and filmed mostly in Ireland. Although named after the Tudor dynasty as a whole, it is based specifically upon the reign of King Henry VIII of England.
A lot has been made about some of the inaccuracies of
"The Tudors series" including costuming, distorting some of the
history, speculative scenes, and so forth.
There is also too much eager sex, especially the women who
give way to King Henry VIII's lust, and especially since pregnancy was too
easy. I think the real situation was probably more along the lines of President Bill Clinton's sexual conquests where there were willing women and
not-so-willing women. The unwilling ones might have included women who were scared out of their wits to say "no" to a powerful man
who could incite his rage by denying him, women who were having their period,
women who were pregnant, women who were repulsed by Henry, women who were in
love with someone else and didn't want Henry's advances, and women who were
devout Christians who found it unsuitable to be a King's mistress for a one
night stand. All of the women act like heavy-breathing porn stars (with tight
bodices or bare breasts: take your pick), so in that way the sexual scenes seem
unbelievable and naive (the fantasy of producers).
There is also a lot more adultery by most of the characters
in this series than what was probably going on at the time. However, adultery
is typical in the social circles of narcissists and sociopaths.
Adulterers and other narcissists surrounded the king, and
that is believable because they would be around the king helping him to carry
out his narcissistic and sociopathic deeds of seduction, manipulating, torture, unprovoked wars,
unprovoked witch hunts, achieving greatness and power with alter agendas (these are the jobs for other narcissists and sociopaths, after all,
not empaths).
The reason I decided to cover The Tudors was not to talk
about abuse survivors as I have with so many other movies, but to cover
"The Life and Times of a Malignant Narcissist." If ever there was a
good depiction of a person with a severe Cluster B personality disorder, it
would be King Henry the VIII.
However, it has been argued that because of the historical
context, Henry VIII could not be labeled with a Cluster B personality (i.e.
that many kings and queens acted psychopathic/sociopathic too; they were
brought up to do that after all). It was a "kill or be killed" time
period for kings and queens, and more about "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
But, I don't particularly feel that siding with either theory is
helpful to survivors of abuse, so I will not get in the middle of that argument
except to say that there is evidence everywhere that Henry VIII had almost all
of the traits of malignant narcissism. In many cases malignant narcissism
emerges in childhood just because you feel "more special" than
others, and others are in deference to you (you are taught that you are one
step from God in terms of decision-making about other people's lives), and that
would definitely apply to the feelings of princes and princesses who learn
early how they rank relative to others.
It would be likely that Mary (King Henry's eldest daughter)
and Elizabeth (King Henry's youngest daughter) would see their stations rise
and fall as Henry annulled his marriages and alternately claimed one or the
other to be bastard children, depending on his whim, and the advice of his
advisers. These children would have been pitted against each other (even to the
extent of representing religions: Catholic versus Reformation) as is seen in most
narcissistic and sociopathic families.
If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have been
saying in my posts that narcissists and sociopaths prefer to surround
themselves with sycophants, as well as other narcissists and sociopaths. Even
when they don't prefer it, other narcissists and sociopaths seem to find a way
to ingratiate themselves to other narcissists and sociopaths that they feel
they can exploit. They scheme, plot, manipulate, erroneously blame and
victimize, betray and often end up as victims themselves. Almost all of the
characters have agendas and they try to find dirt on people who they think will
be of detriment to them in terms of the king's policies or favors.
That means that hardly anyone is likable in this story. Only
a musician in the background of the story seems truly innocent of the
"games" at court.
Jane Seymour is likable, but she doesn't live long.
Catherine Parr is likable in the same way that Jane Seymour is, except maybe not as much; she is shown to have an adulterous affair while her husband is dying.
In the series Henry will screw anything that walks (in terms
of real history he had 3 mistresses that can be confirmed besides his six wives). He commands his subjects swear an oath of
"allegiance and recognition of the king's supremacy" or be tried for
high treason under punishment of death (disgusting in the context of who he is:
not only repugnantly ego-maniacal, but also murderous if he feels at all
slighted or not put first at all times).
Other ways he
is a typical malignant narcissist:
* he gets tired
of people, and especially female conquests, and practices "idealize, devalue, discard" in the most brutal way possible
* he believes
he is more important than any religion and should be worshipped first and
foremost
* he expects
people to defer to him
* he demands
alleigance and faithfulness from everyone he meets, but almost never returns it
* he talks over
others and very rarely listens to others unless they agree with him
* he is rarely
empathetic and enjoys watching the destruction he wreaks
* he expects
everyone else to walk on eggshells
* he
erroneously blames others if he isn't getting what he wants right away
* he murders
people to clear the way for others he wants to seduce (whether that be with
words or with his body)
* he has very
little understanding of others (out of touch)
* he is
surrounded with either sycophants or other narcissists and often can't tell the
difference
* he is
verbally, emotionally and physically abusive
* he is a bully
* he does not
care how he impacts others, though he pretends to care during the idealization
phase (the beginning)
* he feels
others deserve him, whether they get the good side or bad side of him
* he uses
blackmail to get what he wants
* he makes
promises that he rarely keeps
* he pretends
to enjoy the opinion and love of others during the idealize phase (later they
aren't good enough)
* he treats
everyone around him badly
* he fantasizs
that those who are closest to him are his enemies
* he has temper
tantrums
* he acts like
a child
* trumped up
punishments based on desires, heresay, beliefs, and not on facts
* the word
"punishment" is used a lot in his vocabulary
* if something
goes wrong, he always jumps to the conclusion that it is always someone else's
fault (never his)
* in battle he
never lets his soldiers retreat or rest or get over an illness, he most always
insists on "attack, attack, attack"
* he is sadistic
and enjoys the thought of torturing others
Almost
all of the characters seem to be playing chess with each other. Their
haughtiness, scheming, backstabbing and being agreeable to Henry either out of
fear or because they want more promotion is sickening.
But Henry does not always get his way. Thomas More and
Bishop Fisher stick to their beliefs even when threatened with severe torture
as the final outcome. Surely this has to surprise Henry who always thinks that
everyone will cave to his demands and bend to his will. He obviously thinks
fear is a good motivator to keep everyone "in line" and at least
pretending to worship him.
In this blog post, I discuss why ruling through fear does not
work over the long term. Hearts and minds have a way of being recalcitrant even
if fear caves into demands in the short term. But everyone has a breaking point
where morality takes over (i.e. where fear cannot "win the day").
History often looks upon fearless whistle blowers (like Martin Luther King)
with more reverence than the people in power during the time. Indeed America
celebrates Martin Luther King Day, not Lyndon Johnson Day. Similarly More was
"beatified in 1886 and canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint in 1935. He has also been deemed a 'Reformation martyr' by the Church of England." -- According to this Wikipedia article on Thomas More:
The steadfastness and courage with which More maintained his
religious convictions, and his dignity during his imprisonment, trial, and
execution, contributed much to More's posthumous reputation, particularly among
Roman Catholics. His friend Erasmus defended
More's character as "more pure than any snow" and described his
genius as "such as England never had and never again will have."[46] Upon learning of More's execution, Emperor Charles V said: "Had we been master of such a
servant, we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than such a
worthy councillor."[47] G. K. Chesterton, a Roman Catholic convert from the
Church of England, predicted More "may come to be counted the greatest
Englishman, or at least the greatest historical character in English
history."
In the series, when Henry lets Thomas More go to the tower
to be executed, he begins to feel tortured by it. Narcissists and sociopaths do
not feel empathy, so the inner torture Henry feels probably comes down to
knowing he will infuriate Rome and the Pope and that he risks being isolated
and treated as a pariah by other European countries.
When Henry's "loyal servants" want a change, they
figure out a way to frame Anne Boleyn and the many people around her. Some of
it has to do with religious reasons: to reinstate Catholicism. In the series
Henry goes along with framing Boleyn at a time when he has gotten to the
devaluation stage with Anne, so he is willing to listen to anything more that
will further devalue her even though it is clearly desperate hearsay built on
confessions from people who are tortured into it. In fact, he is probably sick
of her and wants an excuse to share his bed with his new love interest, Jane
Seymour.
Henry VIII makes huge mistakes, and is hated, and his lusts
and liaisons are a detriment, but he can't seem to help but be a raving
murderous tyrant stuck between the nightmare of his past and a future of little
hope and promise beyond more of the same except with the addition of ever more
aging, a worsening infection in his leg, paranoia, wars and liaisons that seem
to go nowhere, and madness mixed into the mix.
He requires sycophants at every turn, and yet he does come
to the realization of how sycophants are a detriment to him, at least in his
later years (in the series). At one point he says "You are all just a
bunch of flatterers and I can't trust any of you!"
I am not sure many narcissists and sociopaths come to that
conclusion unless they have absolute power as Henry VIII did. But I do think if
narcissists didn't have the push-back they generally receive from their victims
and/or the law, they would see it, just as Henry VIII saw it.
The reason why sychophantry is problematic is because it is
largely phony behavior, plus it is ultra risky for the sycophant, as well as
the king getting over-thrown (possible spies or enemies). Even the king's most loyal
servants get executed with regularity. That is because sycophants can and do
betray tyrants. They also have their own agendas (and that's the human part of
them). People aren't meant to be agreeable 24-7 or mirroring a king's thoughts,
beliefs, actions, desires and goals in every way. They aren't meant to say yes
to everything. Human beings have differences from one another for a reason. And
Henry finds out soon enough that absolute loyalty and trying to make humans
into puppets is unattainable.
While the push-back is not about the sycophants seeking
justice, it is still there none-the-less in terms of agendas (private thoughts,
private ambitions, private conversations, private anger, private political and
war strategy views which the king cannot hear -- and if he did want to hear
them, his sychophants would lie anyway, just to keep safe from the wrath --
thus "just a bunch of flatterers").
If you listen to how many narcissists talk, they often refer
to their spouses as "Knight in Shining Armour" or "Sir (insert
name of person)-dad" -- after Sir Galahad -- or "the lady
princess" or "my fairy queen" or "my angel" or
"my benevolent King" or "MyLady". Unless they are SCA or
Renaissance Faire enthusiasts, it can be a give-away that you are talking to a
narcissist or sociopath. They want to be royalty and they want you treat them
as such.
Of course, in this day and age, royalty fantasies are often
derided and used for jokes, skits and cartoons, just as political satire is
used to poke fun at the swaggering, assumptions, promises and pronouncements of
our leaders. It keeps narcissism in check to some degree. Narcissists and
sociopaths cringe at the thought of looking ridiculous. In modern times,
freedom of speech keeps most narcissists and sociopaths getting to the "I
am God" phase that they did in King Henry's time.
However, that doesn't mean that they won't continue to try
over and over again, with different methods, or that they have given up
entirely. Most narcissists and sociopaths main objective in life is to control
and rule over others. If they can't have slaves, they will try to make others
into servants. If they can't have servants, they will try to gaslight to manipulate others. If gaslighting doesn't work, they will try to fool
the person in some other way.
Indeed many narcissists and sociopaths want some of the
qualities of Henry the VIII in terms of absolute power. When they start acting
like kings and queens, it is best to take cover, or to start a rebellion (or alternatively, to
start a column, or to draw up a study, or to seek precautions, or to start
lampooning, or cartooning, depending on your situation).
In the series Henry VIII's narcissism does not mellow with
age. In fact, he has even more people put to death, executing Catholics alternating with sudden switches to "Protestant
heretics" (as they are called). The executions seem arbitrary after awhile, and depend on his mood, or how much of an example he wants to make of others.
He does seem, after awhile, to get in touch with the fact that he is dying and
that he needs to stop marginalizing his children and arresting his wives for
high treason, but that is about it.
In effect, he never changes his ways, or his perceptions of
anything. This is typical of malignant narcissists too. Most of them are totally
incapable of "great awakenings". They just continue with their odious
behavior, leaving a path of destruction, continually counting on endless
sources of narcissistic supply to get them out of their periods of doldrums, or self-inflicted disillusionments and dissatisfactions.
Treason is all about disloyalty, and willfulness, and
rebellion, and that is what all narcissists and sociopaths fear and hate, but they are always fine tuned to suspecting others of it. If they feel in the slightest that they do not come first place in another person's life, they are very eager to punish over it, even if it is all in their heads, and even if they practice
disloyalty and willfulness with abandon themselves. Even the slightest feelings
and possibilities of disloyalty are the excuses they use for getting rid of important people.
These aren't great thinkers: they rarely think about why people act the way they do. They resist enlightenment and replace it with superficial understandings or paranoia, with impulsive actions.
As I have said before in a different way, is that most narcissists and sociopaths never come to the realization that there is never (and I mean NEVER) a perfect loyal servant. The "angel
servant" won't come down from heaven and say "yes" to everything, even
though the narcissist or sociopath may keep trying for it. If they are lucky (which most of them are not)
they will find what Henry found: that the "yes, I'll do anything you
want" kinds of people are just a bunch of flatterers and backstabbers who cannot be
trusted.
If you want trusting people around you, it requires the opposite of threats (i.e. compassion, empathy, understanding, and wanting to understand others). Trust and loyalty will never, and can never, be built on threats, bullying, executions and abuse.
This series shows best how a malignant narcissist with a bunch of surrounding narcissists and sociopaths playing servant roles really function. There are few movies or series that cover that aspect of
the narcissist's relationships, but it is an integral part of most malignant narcissists'
lives. It is one that needs to be explored if the human race is ever going to stop bullying and perpetrating child abuse effectively, other than the usual minimal school detections and domestic violence shelters.
FURTHER READING:
an excerpt from the book description:
Have you heard that Catherine the Great died having sex with her horse? Or perhaps you prefer the story that Anne Boleyn had six fingers and slept with her brother? Or that Katheryn Howard slept with so many members of the Tudor court that they couldn’t keep track of them all? As juicy and titillating as the tales might be, they are all, patently untrue ...
... Slut shaming has its roots in our earliest history, but it continues to flourish in our supposedly post-feminist, equal-rights world. It is used to punish women for transgressions against gender norms, threatening the security of their place in society and warning that they’d better be “good girls” and not rock the patriarchal boat, or they, too could end up with people believing they’ve slept with everything from farm animals to relatives.
This is The Jezebel Effect.
The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton -- includes discussion of King Henry VIII
A rebuttal to Kevin Dutton's book by Kyra Kramer, author of Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation for the Tyranny of Henry VIII.
Was Henry VIII a sociopath? (a forum discussion)
I thought Stacey (who majored in psychology) had an interesting perspective:
*Warning* I majored in psychology and I could go on and on about this!! 
Some of his behavior definitely points towards sociopathy IMHO (what is now generally called "Antisocial Personality Disorder"). He certainly could be cold, calculating, cruel and callous, even towards people who had long considered him a close friend.
But I think we have to consider him in the context of his life and times. Even his daughter Queen Elizabeth I, who most definitely was not a sociopath, had people executed when she considered it necessary--most famously in the case of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Back then, when monarchs had virtually unlimited power and people were constantly scheming against you, it was pretty much the law of the jungle: kill or be killed.
Henry was ruthless and extremely narcissistic, and a man who callously tosses one wife aside (Katherine of Aragon), and murders two others (Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard) is not what anyone would call a nice guy. 
I think he may have had some sociopathic traits, but he is a vivid reminder to me of that old saying:
I think he may have had some sociopathic traits, but he is a vivid reminder to me of that old saying:
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I think that definitely happened in Henry's case!! I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this, since I've wondered about it myself.
The Life andDeath of Anne Boleyn: 'The Most Happy' by Professor Eric Ives --
Henry VIII’s Health – Guest Post by Kyra Kramer
Did Henry VIII have a personality disorder? -- from Incorruptible Crown website
Videos:
The Psychology of Henry the Eighth (Tudor scholars discussion):
Henry VIII: love sex and marriage (Tudor scholars discussion):
from curator Brett Dolman on Henry VIII's wives:
"King Henry the VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant, Part I"
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