Psychology as a short subject

At this late date, probably no one will be surprised to hear that Freud’s image has been more than a little tarnished. Anti-Freudian tomes continue to tumble off the presses; scholars and critics who were once in thrall to psychoanalysis now vilify the old dogma with the fury of religious converts. In the treatment of psychiatric patients, drug therapy has replaced the “talking cure,” which expected patients to pore over their childhood wounds on a rigorous journey to understanding. And in Hollywood, the cinematic shrink du jour is not the wise, all-knowing analyst enshrined in movies such as “Spellbound” or “Ordinary People,” but the flesh-eating madman Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Some of this questioning of psychoanalytic orthodoxy is long overdue: For years, doctors and pundits relied on simplistic slogans to explain the stubborn mysteries of character. But in the effort to overthrow old pieties, we may have gone too far in the opposite direction. One unfortunate result of the anti-Freudian revolution is that it has contributed to the wholesale elimination of in-depth character exploration in movies. I’m not talking here about action extravaganzas with cartoon characters. The more disturbing phenomenon is that movies ostensibly intended to be character-driven also turn out to be surprisingly flat.

When a psychological viewpoint pervaded the culture, filmmakers provided rich character dramas as diverse as “All About Eve,” “The Hustler,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” and “The Conversation,” to name just a few. What’s striking about so many of today’s movies is not just that they’re much shallower than those classic studies of complex characters, but also that they’re intentionally shallow. Pictures like “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Auto Focus,” “Frida,” “Secretary,” “Man on the Moon” and “Pollock” deliberately shun any piercing psychological dissection of their troubled protagonists. One might call these movies defiantly anti-psychological, and they’re created by some of our hippest filmmakers, who seem to believe that anything resembling a psychiatric approach to character would be hopelessly archaic. Unfortunately, without that psychological dimension, there’s a gaping hole in these movies.

It’s understandable that filmmakers want to avoid the psychobabble that sometimes ruined the earnest Freudian movies of the past. Even a sharp recent film, “One Hour Photo,” falls victim to this crude expository impulse. The movie is utterly compelling up until the moment when it “explains” Robin Williams’ psychosis by disclosing his own childhood molestation. The revelation seems reductive and false to the creepy, hauntingly mysterious character created earlier in the film.

Unexplored territory

Although such a neat summary of a complicated personality can seem fraudulent, a stubbornly anti-psychological slant is no more satisfying. Consider Paul Schrader’s “Auto Focus,” which has been highly praised but remains a relentlessly superficial study of TV nonentity Bob Crane, who went from gee-whiz family man to randy swinger during the course of a few years in the ‘60s. The film observes his startling transformation from the outside but doesn’t elucidate it. Despite Greg Kinnear’s brave and magnetic performance, the movie tells us nothing about Crane that would help us to understand why he toppled into a far more extreme form of sexual addiction than many of his flower-child cohorts.

Schrader’s earlier movies, from “Taxi Driver” to “Affliction,” have evinced a more searing investigation of tormented characters, so perhaps the skin-deep strategy of “Auto Focus” is attributable to the screenwriter, Michael Gerbosi, and two of the movie’s producers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Alexander and Karaszewski wrote three earlier biographical pictures -- “Ed Wood,” “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” and “Man on the Moon” (a biography of another TV star, Andy Kaufman) -- that took a similar anti-psychological approach to their real-life subjects. Their tactic in those movies is simply to present a bizarre oddball without trying to suggest what makes him tick.

Julie Taymor’s visually striking “Frida” takes an external approach to the biopic. It ticks off many of the incidents in Frida Kahlo’s life, but it doesn’t delve into her psyche or the dynamic of her volatile relationship with Diego Rivera. Why was Kahlo drawn to this notorious womanizer? Why did she endure his deceit and infidelity? And on the other side, what were the reasons for Rivera’s promiscuity? The film refuses to speculate, apparently on the misguided theory that anyscrutiny would invade the artist’s privacy.

These biographies aren’t the only recent films to confuse sophistication with psychological shallowness. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” starts out as an intriguing character study of Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), a social misfit overpowered by seven domineering sisters. They relentlessly control and belittle him, and his response is to alternate between abject servility and outbursts of rage. These opening scenes are evocative, but it quickly becomes clear that Anderson isn’t really interested in burrowing into the mind of the maladjusted character he’s introduced.

In one of these early scenes, Barry asks his brother-in-law if he can recommend a psychiatrist, and most neutral observers would say that this guy is in desperate need of one. But to Anderson, the idea of psychotherapy is a joke, because he has no intention of plumbing Barry’s anguish. The movie abandons any pretense of psychological realism once Barry begins a romance with a sister’s friend (Emily Watson). What would motivate her to pursue him so avidly? Anderson offers no hint as to the perverse tendencies that might draw her to someone so dangerous and disturbed.

Whatever else you might say about Freudian theory, it was a supremely logical reading of the dark mysteries of human nature. Anderson’s movie, by contrast, wallows in illogic and brutal sensationalism. Maybe that was his intention, part of some half-baked existentialist credo. But it’s also possible that he and his hip cohorts avoid psychoanalyzing unstable characters because they simply don’t have the ability to penetrate unconscious motivations and hidden drives.

Happy exceptions

Fortunately, these aren’t the only types of movies in the marketplace. There are some bright, savvy filmmakers who still respect a meticulous, analytical approach to character. “The Sopranos,” which is deeply in thrall to psychoanalysis, remains one of the best dramas on television.

The unjustly maligned “Abandon,” written and directed by Stephen Gaghan (the Oscar-winning writer of “Traffic”), is a smart psychological thriller that draws us into the cunning yet troubled mind of a woman (Katie Holmes) unhinged by a series of primal betrayals. And “8 Mile” pays serious attention to the family dynamic that contributes to the anger of the embattled, insecure Rabbit (Eminem). Screenwriter Scott Silver and director Curtis Hanson expose the character’s psychological scars as well as his animal energy. The ending, in which he finally acknowledges his own history in his improvised rap taunt, is actually a classic psychoanalytic moment: A young man breaks free of his oppressive past by accepting and even embracing the personal demons that drive him.

Whereas “Punch-Drunk Love” titillates us with the hero’s family turmoil, only to dismiss it as an irrelevant joke, “8 Mile” sees that family background as absolutely crucial to understanding the character.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d say movies desperately need more of this astute psychological analysis and a lot less of the gaudy pyrotechnics and glib, absurdist spectacle that pass for postmodern profundity.