New Book: Milan, Betty. ADIEU LACAN. Éditions Érès, 2023
"Milan, Betty. ADIEU LACAN. Éditions Érès, 2023."
Betty Milan has published a book with the title “Adieu Lacan,” named after the film I made based on two of her works that are contained in it. I wrote the postface to one of the works in the book. This is the first time my writing has been published in a book. It’s in French. The publisher is Eres. You can purchase the book from the publisher’s website. Please find above an image of the front cover, as well as the text in French and in English below.
Postface (FR)
Postface (EN)
I had been thinking for many years about making a film about psychoanalysis when I was given an opportunity by the Apres Coup Psychoanalytic Association in New York City to direct a staged reading of Betty Milan’s play “Goodbye Doctor” before an audience of its members, mostly clinicians and those working towards becoming clinicians, with the author present. I was immediately struck that her play appealed to this specialized audience while at the same time it had an accessibility on the level of its narrative–the story of a woman who wants to know why her own path to motherhood has become an impossible one–that I thought could help transmit Lacan’s work to a wider audience and also make a unique film. At the same time I was also struck by Betty Milan, the writer and psychoanalyst. Betty encouraged me the entire way, which was very important to me, since I wanted to take certain liberties, revealing that the doctor in question was Lacan and that the imminent death with which he is confronted is his own. I am forever grateful for the trust she placed in me. Of course, black and white films preceded films in color. The 4:3 aspect ratio was basically the standard aspect ratio of silent films. These were two choices I made at the start that had a profound effect on the final result, among them to emphasize temporality and the history of cinema. In “Archéologie du cinéma et mémoire du siecle,” published in 2000, the Iranian writer on film and modernity, Youssef Ishagpour, and the recently deceased French Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard discuss Godard’s HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA. In their discussion they articulate a distinction between cinema as it has been traditionally perceived as “à l’abris du temps” a shelter from time, and how it can be employed today as an “abris du temps” a shelter for time. In other words, in the age of the internet when the complexity of time is very often flattened and effaced by the insistence of the often manipulated and distracting present, cinema through its historicity is a place where temporality can be allowed to re-emerge. And cinema–thought of and used in this way–as an abris du temps is analogous, I would argue, to the practice of psychoanalysis, where the complexity of time can be given a chance to re- emerge. In other words, psychoanalysis and cinema, born at the same time but having lived their lives in regards to the dimension of time mainly estranged, now have the possibility of a changed relation to each other because of this new relation of cinema to time. This emphasis on time was also present in the way we filmed. We shot the film chronologically, in other words, we filmed the scenes in the order in which they appear in the screenplay. Among the few filmmakers who have worked this way consistently are Micheangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman. This was possible with ADIEU LACAN because principle photography took place in a single location. Working this way allows both the actors and the director to make discoveries in the moment of filming and incorporate them into the film as they go along in a way that is analogous to jazz improvisation. Doing things this way allowed me to sense the film’s internal timing and to take risks with the camera that I might otherwise have avoided. For example, keeping the image out of focus for an extended period of time and in the use of a technique for which I took as inspiration the form of the stichomathia in Greek tragedy. This very formal device where actors speak alternating lines of verse became for me the technique of moving the camera in a short rhythmic way between the two main actors in a scene of dialogue later in the film. In regards to this, I want to return to the conversation between Ishagpour and Godard where they observe that cinema can strive to present “the image of reality” or alternatively “the reality of the image.” The latter can be said to take us out of the story. I think in this film at different points I alternate between these two approaches, using the materiality of the image as an analogy for the materiality of speech in analysis. Let me end by referencing two works of media that influenced me in directing ADIEU LACAN. An important point of comparison for me was IN TREATMENT, the US 2008 TV. It was an example of what I wanted to avoid–which is not intended as a criticism of this show but only that I saw immediately that my goal was different. The camera is always parallel to the ground and at eye level as the camera goes from shot to reverse shot. The use of the camera always parallel to the ground in this series represented for me the kind of level and balanced relationship born of mutual respect that is intended to be maintained in therapy between therapist and patient. What I wanted to portray, on the other hand, was the subjective experience of transference in psychoanalysis; I wanted to express with the camera projections of knowledge and power and feelings of ignorance and powerlessness as frequently they arise in transference… for this reason, I asked my film’s cinematographer Valentina Caniglia to watch with me Carl Dreyer’s 1928 film JEANNE D’ARC starring Renee Falconetti. Dreyer’s film formed the foundation for our own approach. Although among my original reasons for wanting to make ADIEU LACAN was to better acquaint a wider audience with the work of Jacques Lacan, today I am also delighted at the thought that it may also serve this purpose for the work of Betty Milan.