"Living with the Dead: Cinematic love and death"
Mary O’ Neill
In recent years the understanding of grief as a consequence of love and death has
developed beyond the model that suggested that the bereaved would eventually
‘recover’ and be able to replace the loved one. More recently bereavement theories
have incorporated the knowledge, which has so often been expressed by the bereaved
in the arts, that ‘recovery’ my not in fact be possible or desirable for the bereaved
person. In this paper I will discuss two films that explore the consequences of love
and death. In Christopher Hampton’s Carrington (1995) we witness the intense love
of Dora Carrington for Lytton Strachey which results in her being unable to face a life
without him and consequently commits suicide. In Francois Ozon’s Under the Sand
(2001) we see a character who is also unable to accommodate the death of her
husband and appears to her friends to have ‘gone mad’.
My interest in these films lies in the connection between the portrayal of the reactions
of the two female characters to the death of their life companions and recent
understanding of grieving. Focusing on cinematic temporal devises such as the
lingering gaze of the camera and hesitation I will discuss how these devices embody
reactions to death and the experiences of mourning. These works exemplify the two
characteristics of film that Laura Mulvey identifies in Death 24x a second as the
human fascination with the boundary between life and death and the animation of the
inanimate. I will explore the historical parallels between the treatment of death in
film and clinical understanding of grief from a sociological and a phenomenological
perspective with reference to the history of cinematic portrayal of bereavement. These
films will be discussed in relation to the recent work of Colin Murray Parkes and the
work of John Bowly, both of whom have contributed significantly to our understand
of the relationship between love and death. I will also explore the unique possibilities
that film offers for the treatment of this subject through the stellar time of cinema
where we can see what no longer exists.
Mary O’ Neill
In recent years the understanding of grief as a consequence of love and death has
developed beyond the model that suggested that the bereaved would eventually
‘recover’ and be able to replace the loved one. More recently bereavement theories
have incorporated the knowledge, which has so often been expressed by the bereaved
in the arts, that ‘recovery’ my not in fact be possible or desirable for the bereaved
person. In this paper I will discuss two films that explore the consequences of love
and death. In Christopher Hampton’s Carrington (1995) we witness the intense love
of Dora Carrington for Lytton Strachey which results in her being unable to face a life
without him and consequently commits suicide. In Francois Ozon’s Under the Sand
(2001) we see a character who is also unable to accommodate the death of her
husband and appears to her friends to have ‘gone mad’.
My interest in these films lies in the connection between the portrayal of the reactions
of the two female characters to the death of their life companions and recent
understanding of grieving. Focusing on cinematic temporal devises such as the
lingering gaze of the camera and hesitation I will discuss how these devices embody
reactions to death and the experiences of mourning. These works exemplify the two
characteristics of film that Laura Mulvey identifies in Death 24x a second as the
human fascination with the boundary between life and death and the animation of the
inanimate. I will explore the historical parallels between the treatment of death in
film and clinical understanding of grief from a sociological and a phenomenological
perspective with reference to the history of cinematic portrayal of bereavement. These
films will be discussed in relation to the recent work of Colin Murray Parkes and the
work of John Bowly, both of whom have contributed significantly to our understand
of the relationship between love and death. I will also explore the unique possibilities
that film offers for the treatment of this subject through the stellar time of cinema
where we can see what no longer exists.
