Sybil

Sybil Dorsett is shy, young graduate who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as multiple personality disorder, due to her childhood trauma.This film illustrates on the onset of the disorder and the process of discovering and resolving it with Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Wilbur.

Portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) symptoms
According to DSM-V, below are the criteria to diagnose DID.
1. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.
 - Peggy, Vicky, Vanessa, Marcia, Ruthie, Nancy, Clara and etc, all of them had introduced themselves as different identity and person, where they had different personalities and needs. For example, Vanessa was very outgoing and she portrayed herself (Sybil) as young and vibrant. She tried to help Sybil in building a relationship with Richard, whom she fell in love with.

2. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.
 - Sybil revealed that she had a two-year-gap in memories and she could not recall what had happened. It would not be logical to say that it is merely an episode of forgetfulness.

3. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. 
 - What Sybil was experiencing had even led her to killing herself, which is seriously impairing her life.

4. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice.
Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.
 - It was obviously abnormal to the cultural practice as Sybil was suggested to consult psychiatrist when she broke down in front of her students.

5. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures).
 - Sybil was not seen to be indulging in any substance or suffering from another medical condition in the movie.

All in all, I think the film accurately depicted the symptoms of DID through Sally Field's acting skills.

Form of therapy 
As portrayed in the film, Dr Wilbur had adopted the method of hypnosis to assist Sybil to recall her memories as I think the focus of the therapy was mainly on uncovering her past traumatic experiences and trying to resolve it. Hypnosis is known as a mean to understand or even alter the repressed memories in psychoanalysis approach. It seemed to be the only way to help Sybil to recall her memories, but as mentioned, hypnosis could unintentionally/unknowingly alter her memories too. Thus, the use of hypnosis is still questionable but it was good to see that Sybil had benefited from it in the end.

Ethical challenges
I find the relationship between Sybil and Dr. Wilbur being quite controversial. Although in this case, I could see no other way to get deeper understanding in Sybil's story and help her, I think Dr Wilbur demonstrated a very motherly care towards Sybil. She was even warned by her colleague to not get attached to her. This could be one of the ethical challenges where Dr Wilbur could have been more careful with her behavior and attitude towards Sybil to avoid attachment which might lead to unnecessary ethical issues.

Schindler's List

Oscar Schindler, a German who saved roughly 1100 Jews by putting them in his factory to work during the Jews' darkest time in Germany. Although Schindler's initial intention was to make money out of them, he realizes he could do something greater with his actions - to save these innocent Jews. Thanks to Itzhak Stern, his administrator, who was also a Jews, falsified documents to retain all the Jews in the factory. 

If I were to put a meaning in "war", it would be something that allow you to see the downside of human's behavior, that you would not see in daily life. During that time, the Germans were being extremely cruel and ruthless towards Jews even though the Jews had done nothing wrong.

Talking alongside with Milgram's experiment that was inspired by Nazis' act, it was indicated that the army detached the responsibility as they were merely following order. However, going in deeper, most of them in the army, truly believed that what they were doing was for justice. But how? How did they believe that it was right to kill people? How did they sleep well at night after torturing all these innocent people? And for this, I would attribute this "honor" to the leader, Hitler, of what he had done to "brainwash" his army. According to Reicher, Haslam and Rath (2008), they proposed a social identity model of how people who commit great wrongs actually know what they are doing, choose to do it and celebrate what they did, which explained the background of the movie of why the Nazis committed such crimes without mercy. There were five steps of making a virtue out of evil.

1. Identification: At this stage, they construct and generate an in-group identity, by seeking common ground of interest, which would become a source of empowerment to their acts later. 
2. Exclusion: They start to define who and what would be counted as "one of us". "What is the first Commandment of every National Socialist?...Love Germany above all else and your ethnic comrad [Volksgenosse] as your self." (Koonz, 2003). This was the narrow definition they made about them and this stage of exclusions and inclusion would bring about a whole different set of behaviors.
3. Threat: While many groups that do not share identity, they do not necessarily hate each other. The conflict only arises when certain groups are seen as threats to their hosts. From internet, I actually found that Jews were perceived as having too much wealth and power by Germans, which was a justifiable threat. However, it slowly developed to "Jews are a convenient group to single out and blame for our troubles" and "We hate Jews because they are different from us", which I could never understand the hate in it.
4. Virtue: At this stage, Nazis presented themselves as a moral project. They wanted to "clean up" their nation from the "unwanted influences". They no longer mention Jews, but mention more of German supremacy. Reicher et al. (2008) mentioned that the higher the ingroup virtues, the more serious the outgroup threat becomes, and when this happens, their "cleaning" to defend themselves would become more acceptable. 
5. Celebration: When virtues are clearly defined, when group boundaries are clear, the stage is set for further problems. If "they" represent "evil", then it would be a necessity for the destruction to take place.

Back to the movie, Schindler, on the other hand, was being very kind to the Jews, to the extent of allowing them to even celebrate Sabbath. At that point, his factory did not produce even one working shell, as he bribed officials and sold shells from other companies to keep his workers alive. The amount of empathy and responsibility that Schindler was having could be observed during the scene of how he was mortified at how he could have save more lives. The "what if"s, "what could have been"s, and "what should have been"s. This is something I would appreciate the most, to see the light in such darkness, to feel the warmth in such coldness, to see the humanity of inhumanities.

Hunt for Wilderpeople

According to the attachment theory, both Ricky Baker and Hec would be categorized into the avoidant-attachment style. After he was sent to his new foster family with Hec and Bella, he tried to run away at the very beginning. He did not want to talk to anyone and even though Bella has been trying to make him feel warmth and love, he sneaked out at the midnight and tried to escape. Perhaps it was the abandonment by his mum that led him to this but it is also possible that he did not believe there would be kind people in the world due to his past experience with the child welfare services and the loss of his best friend. Perhaps this is also why he was being described by as a troublesome kid who did "graffiti-ing, littering, smashing stuff, burning stuff, breaking stuff, stealing stuff, throwing rocks...", he wanted to protect himself as he was never loved by anyone. However, it was heartwarming to see that he began to talk to Bella and even starting to form an attachment with her, which was shown when they could sing along for his own birthday although the song was a self-composed one. It was also the beginning of him having a taste of love, that unlock his armed heart, that enabled him to be fearless to try getting closer with Hec after Bella's death.

I would consider Hec was also having the avoidant-attachment style because he hardly form any attachment with anyone too. Even with Bella, he did not have much interaction with her in daily life, he did not show any affection towards anyone. However, we could feel how much he loves Bella especially when he expressed his sadness in tears while holding Bella in his arm when she's dead. His later revelation about his past with Ricky, had also revealed the reason he became what he was.

The process of forming attachment with each other between Ricky and Hec was the highlight of the movie. They were similar to each other, in terms of experience and the way they react to the environment, only one was younger and one was older, which made a huge difference as Ricky still kept a naive side of him where he would want to be loved and cared. His was still not in complete disappointment to the world, which is why he was easily lit up by Bella. However, Hec had much more experience with the world. He was realistic, and he had enough of disappointment with the world that he did not want to give anymore. He only wanted to keep everything to himself and keep himself isolated from the world. Yet, he could not resist this thing called "love", that he got showered by Bella and Ricky, which eventually led him to forming that attachment with Ricky.  

"No Child Left Behind"
It's sarcastic to see how the child welfare services has been using this tagline yet their actions have not been really synchronised with it. Yes, they tried to find Ricky when he went missing but the thing is they made a big fuss out of the missing of Ricky by having helicopter and police car to chase him, just to throw him into juvenile prison again, made all the efforts they put in the chase sound really ridiculous. The tagline was supposed to be advocating for children's welfare, but their actions have already gone wild, losing the original intention.

Grace is Gone

Grace is gone is a heartfelt movie about how a veteran, Stanley grieved over the death of his wife, Grace, while contemplated on how to tell his two young children, Dawn and Heidi, about the news.

When Stanley first received the news, he was in great shock. It can be seen that he was in denial of the fact for quite a long time, from the moment when he stopped Dawn and Heidi from eating the food that was given as condolences, to his behavior of calling home, wanting to inform his dead wife everything was alright on the trip. He also deployed the mechanism of reaction formation as his behavior was contrast to the situation he faced at that moment. For example, he told his daughters it was fine to take a break from school. He decided to bring them to their favourite theme park after Dawn's impromptu suggestion and even allowed Heidi and Dawn to get their ear pierced.

If I were to put myself in his shoes, I would not know how to handle the situation too. The death of spouse is heartbreaking, yet I had to stay strong for my children especially when they were so young and I didn't even know how to inform them about it. The hardest part is I will have to manage my emotion and taking care of theirs at the same time. When my grandmother passed away 5 years ago, I remember how my dad was being so calm and strong in front of us about his own mother's death when even my mum could not bear the pain and cried. "This is how life is supposed to be, she has suffered enough and it is good that she is released from the pain now," I remember how my dad said this to me as I felt so sad about her death and went on crying for few consecutive days. I do think that how my parents went through the grief process, deeply affected me, as I learned it through my observation on them. I am glad that they did not just keep everything to themselves but instead shared their thoughts with me, which enabled me to slowly let go of the fact that my grandmother had left us.

This movie revealed the other side of the families who endure the pain and consequences in the battle with Iraq. Throughout the film, audiences are led to pick up the feeling of sympathy and be in the position of Grace's family. The movie subtly uncovered the reality of how the political belief and stand collide with each other, and how it ignites the war, through the father-daughter conversation and the broadcast of television in the movie. During the war, they get to see updates on the news daily and the media was trying to portray and categorize the battle as necessary for the sake of glory of being Americans. We are always proud to see how a villain was defeated by our country heroes. The magnificent explosion in the battle field, soldiers who put their life aside and were fueled up with the courage to fight for the country… Generally, people would expect this kind of story when we were to talk about war. Surprisingly, this movie captures the moment behind the war, the world under the mat we did not expect to see or rather, usually ignored. The impact it brings when the whole family has to endure the pain of losing one or even more family members in a battle, just for the sake of glory, is it worthy? Bear in mind, this movie was only shot and focused on one family, can we imagine how many families are this closely related to war?

The Experimenter

The Experimenter is a movie based on the true story of a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, who had studied on obedience through conducting a series of experiments back in 1961. The study had stirred up controversy to not only the psychology world but also the whole world during that time.

Most of the people tend to believe or assume that they are kind in nature and that they would not intentionally hurt someone. This study conducted by Milgram would have an authority figure, a teacher(participants) and a learner(confederate), where the teacher would be ask to administer shock to the learner when the learner did not answer the question correctly. This idea, that came out of his curiosity of why would the followers of Nazis would obey to instructions of execution without questions or guilt. not only had administered physical test shock to the participants, but also psychological shock to them. The controversy was mainly about the ethical issue in it as participants were observed being under a great amount of distress during the experiment, due to their cognitive dissonance. They knew that it was not appropriate to administer shock to these people, yet they continue doing so. The experiment was indeed very interesting as people kind of found the true side of them when it comes to situation where they are required to merely obey to an authority figure without doubts.

On a side note, I believe that one of the controversies was that people did not feel comfortable being revealed or confronted as being an unkind person. The concept of self-presentation refers to the extent of people behave according to how they want others to perceive themselves. During the experiment, especially during the debriefing after it is over, the participants felt relieved that they did not really hurt the learner, yet they felt contradicted as they could not accept this side of them where they were actually willing to hurt someone else. The criticism regarding ethical issue seems more like a defense mechanism that the world used to defend themselves from being tested on this even further. They want to stop talking / disucssing about it. This is what the movie is trying to portray through the scenes where an elephant was walking behind Milgram. It is actually used to resemble the metaphorical idiom "elephant in the room", hinting on the phenomenon in which people's refusal to admit or discuss about an obvious risk.

I have always had interest in topic about obedience since I first get my hands on this research when I first attended PSY 111 Social Psychology class. I found this study amazing as it reveals a down side of human's behavior. If I were to conduct a social experiment without ethical or budgeting limit, I would really want to do something about to what extent would people go for their own pleasure at the expense of others. I have not had an actual idea on how to do this but I really want to find out more about the selfishness in people.

Amadeus

It's a fictional tale of a genius, narrated by a mediocrity. Having mere passion is not enough on the path of music, but with god's gift. Thus, a tragedy begins when a passionate court composer - Antonio Salieri met with the gifted musician - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Antonio Salieri is no doubt devoted to God, with his passion in music. Before meeting Mozart, he was already amazed by his piece and convinced that his talent was gift from God. Their first encounter was shocking to Salieri, expecting a paradigmatic person but seeing Mozart's libertine's side had crashed his fantasy. Nonetheless, he was subdued by Mozart's piece. During their first official meeting, Salieri presented his creation, "March of Welcome". Mozart could just play it from memory after hearing it once. He critiqued the piece and effortlessly transformed it. From there, Salieri's envy transforming into jealousy, the journey of him revenging on God began with no return. 

Cognitive Dissonance

It was very obvious to the audience that Salieri had strong cognitive dissonance. He was left in awe every time after listening to Mozart. He could not help but to recognize and acknowledge Mozart's talent. Yet, he was conflicted because he could not understand God's will in giving such great gift to the childish and presumptuous Mozart. He tried to reduce his dissonance by interpreting it as God's cruel despise on his mediocrity and hence wanted to revenge.

In my opinion, Mozart has the gift from God, of having the ability to compose wonderful classics; while Salieri, conscious of his oblivious gift, the ability to recognise and understand the gifted, but twisted it because of his dissatisfaction and jealousy of Mozart, and his misunderstanding of God's message.

Instead of Mozart's life, this film is more like a journey of transformation of Salieri's state of mind. From awe and admiration to jealousy and hatred, his life was tied to Mozart since the moment they met. Following Mozart's death, Salieri's passion in music and life were gone too.
Perhaps it's another blessing from God that Mozart never know what had led him to his death. Towards the end of his life, thinking that the murderer was his bosom friend while doing something he had devoted his life for, who says he's not the lucky one?

At the end of the film, Mozart's significant high-pitched laughter leads to the credit role, as if that was the purest and uncontaminated part of the film.

Whale Rider

Whale Rider is a film of a young girl, Paikea who struggles with the duty she believes she was born to fill and the stereotyped role that her grandfather who is also the leader of the community, Koro expects her to play. 

Paikea was born as one of the twins. However, her birth was accompanied by the death of her mother and her elder twin brother. Koro was not happy with her birth as only the first-born male of every generation were allowed to take up the mantle as the chief of the tribe. Koro demanded Paikea's father to get married again so that there would be a successor but Paikea's father was in despair and did not want to obey. Over the years as Paikea grew up, she started to grow on Koro and he no longer looked at her with the same feelings of disappointment yet there is still some beliefs in his mind that he could not abandon.

Cognitive Dissonance
In the film, Koro seems to display cognitive dissonance as he appears to be having conflict between his attitude, belief and behavior. At the beginning of the film, Koro seems to be having an affectionate bond with Paikea through his act of fetching her back from school everyday and his patience while explaining to Paikea about the history of the tribe. However, when he was having an argument with his son, who is also Paikea's father, about his marriage and the issues faced within the tribe, he told his son that Paikea "has no use to him" and asked him to bring her away. At some point of time in the film, Koro even blame Paikea and condemn on her for what had happened in the community. According to Festinger (1962), cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort which would lead to the alteration of one's attitudes, beliefs or behaviors, which in turns help to reduce the discomfort. Koro has always believed that only male descendent could be the leader of the tribe which leads him to be unhappy about Paikea's birth as her dead twin brother was supposed to be the successor. Even so, he managed to develop a strong positive bond with Paikea over the years, which clashed with his belief of dominance of male. This had created a sense of discomfort within Koro and led him to alter his behavior towards Paikea, i.e. not picking up Paikea from school without informing her. It was there that ignited his harsh treatment towards Paikea, which he would punish her for trying to attend lessons to become the chief of the tribe.

Hostile sexism
One thing noteworthy is the element of sexism in the film. As mentioned above, Koro has a strong belief that only male descendent could become the successor, which was why he did not allow Paikea to attend classes. Paikea was not given the opportunity to showcase her ability. He did not want to acknowledge Paikea as the chief candidate even after Paikea demonstrated having the ability to become the chief because the role of tribe leader has traditionally been male. Would it be possible to say that Koro was only trying to fulfill the tradition which at some instances, it's the culture being sexist, and not Koro? 

Forget Paris

There is a Chinese Proverb saying "It is easy to fall in love, but not so easy to get along".

This could easily be seen on the couple - Mickey and Ellen, the couples who met and fell in love with each other in Paris. They eventually got married after Ellen was divorced. What happened in Paris was wonderful. The sightseeing around Paris, dancing by the river and everything else was so perfect that, they constantly remind themselves after they get married that everything could go back to the time in Paris.

A lot of time in the film, Mickey was told by his friends "Forget Paris". It was supposed to be telling Mickey to forget about how lovable and attractive the person was when they first met. A complete individual would normally have many sides of himself/herself. He acts differently when he is around different people or when he is in different context. When we first met someone who caught our attention, we instinctively present the best part of ourselves just to impress the person. However, while in marriage, people get to see every side of each others as they are going to stay together for a very long time, which is the reason many couples tend to have a lot more arguments when there is not enough understanding of each other before getting married. Getting into a relationship or a marriage is about the involving another person in your life while involve yourself in another person's life. It's about accommodation to each other, not dependence on each other.

According to the triangular theory of love, there are three components in a relationship, Intimacy, Passion and Commitment. A complete form of love, which is seemed to be the most perfect form - consummate love, consists of all three components. In real life, I think that three of the components exist in every relationship, it is just the degree of each components that differs. To me, marriage is largely based on commitment as we will need to compromise ourselves to each other so that the relationship satisfaction could be maintained. For Mickey and Ellen's case, we can easily see that they did not get to understand each other before getting married. There was merely passion in the marriage at first. I was glad that they had been trying to compromise, Mickey was willing to try giving up his career to stay at home with Ellen while Ellen was willing to send her father to her brother's place just wishing to make up for their marriage. Although the process was tough, they were able to realise it's each other's existence that matter to them the most in the end of movie. However, I am reserved to say that they will have a happily-ever-after-ending as they will still encounter a lot more problems in the future, which might slowly wear out their passion towards each other.

One thing interesting about the film is that the whole story was told from the third-person view. Applying it to real life, sometimes we see couples who have a lot of arguments and fightings, eventually got married; while sometimes couples that seem fine and demonstrating PDA in public, somehow did not manage to get there. Most of the time we might take a bet among friends on how long a couple would last and sometimes things just turn out the other way round. To me, it is always important to have communication. Whether a couple fight, argue or just stay sweet, they could go for a long way as long as they are willing to communicate to each other about their problems and concerns. Marriage is not the end but another beginning, while communication is the key to the happy ending.

Let me end this with a quote by Eric Fromm.
Immature love says: I love you because I need you
Mature love says: I need you because I love you
- Eric Fromm (1956)

Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom is a movie that portrays the main character, Scott Hastings as a talented but stubborn young dancer. Scott is bored with the "strictly ballroom" dance moves and wants to dance his own steps to win the Pan Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship. However, he was not agreed by everyone else except for his partner later - Fran, a beginner dancer. The conflict between him with his partners, him with his mother and coach, formed the storyline and eventually brought out the central message - to live life in your own way. Social influence is a psychological phenomenon that is easily seen in daily life. It is clearly portrayed in the movie by the characters' behavior.

Conformity
Strictly ballroom, as its name, dancers can only dance ballroom steps but not any other steps. In the movie, it can be seen in all of the dancing scenes that all of the pairs only follow the formulated dance. I could not even differentiate who was the main character until Scott started to dance differently. No one tried to be different because everyone was doing the same. Scott's first dancing partner was infuriated when Scott behaved differently during the competition, which caused them losing the competition. She did not want to be different, she wanted to fit in because being different would be rejected - which was portrayed as losing competition in the movie.

Obedience
At the same time, all of the dancing studios only teach dancers the formulated dance because they were afraid that their membership/license would be taken away by Australian Dance Federation which would take away their source of income.

Compliance
Scott decided to give up on his own style of dancing even after insisting for so long and going through so many disagreements with his own mother (who used to be a dancer too) and his coach, because he was requested to not disappoint his parents and fulfill his dad's dream of getting champion on Pan Pacific. He gave in and decided to dance with his previous dancing partner - Liz.

A life lived with fear is the life half-lived, said Fran on the way Scott sent her home.
This statement had left a deep impression in me. As a very ordinary human, fear has always been haunting me for not taking steps to achieve what I want. Fearful of punishment (physical or psychological - regrets, discrimination, ), is why I have been careful with my behavior and words. It limits me when I want to voice an opinion about something, talk about myself or even do something for myself.

One of the examples would be, I used to be very active in class when I was in secondary school. I ask questions and I would raise my hand to answer questions. However, when I first came to university, I was not dare to ever raise my voice in class. I thought I was intimidated because the other people in the class seem to be more outstanding. Then I slowly realised it was the social influence from the people I mixed with. Although they are quite smart, they never want to speak in class because they did not want to be the center of attention. While me being afraid to be judged or excluded from the bunch, I chose to keep quiet. Slowly, I could not even pay attention anymore as there isn't interaction with the lecturer. It was lucky that I quickly adjusted afterwards which it did not affect my study but I was not happy with my change. It pushed me to pick up the elective subject - Psychology of Pop Culture, offered by Dr. Anasuya. It was a subject that required people to talk in class and participation mark was so high that it could result in you passing or failing the subject. I tried my best to speak up in class and have discussion. It was a semester of struggles, I received doubts from others and myself, I did not score well in it. I used to be regret at the very beginning when the semester ended but I changed my mind after a talk with Dr and some thinking. Now, I am proud of myself that I challenged and put myself in that uncomfortable situation. Even though I might not have scored well, I know I have tried and I have gained a lot that could benefit me in the future.

On the other hand, I also found that there was time I was brave enough to stand up for myself. Back at my hometown in Sandakan, Sabah, psychology is a very rare, or close to nowhere-to-be-heard-term. It is a beautiful land with wonderful people but they were lack of the knowledge about psychology. They thought it was all about crazy people. All of the knowledge they knew about psychology was based on stereotypes and/or drama. Even my parents who are educators in primary school, they could not understand my desire and purpose of studying psychology. My dad was the one who had opposed to my proposal of studying psychology. He wanted me to take up a course that could guarantee a well-earned job. I took years to persuade and prove to him that I could be fine with the option I chose, I would make him proud even if it is not the pathway he wants me to walk. In the end, he gave in and let me decide on what I want. All these while in the past 3 years, he has been supportive and understanding to me. 

From my experience and thought after watching the film, what I want to deliver is that it is fine to be different as long as you are not committing crimes or doing anything that is bad. Your efforts will prove to you and the people around you that most of the time, winning or losing is not what is important, but doing what you want and what is right is fine because it is always more important that there is no regret. Tried and failed (not necessary) is always better than not trying at all as throughout the journey, there will always be something that you would gain.

It is also good to try listening and understand first when you see someone acting differently. The out-of-the-box-thinking should be appreciated as sometimes it is the way to discovery of new era.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Family dinner is one of the rituals of Chinese culture and it is often seemed as a time of reunion, a bonding session while everyone is having meal together. However, in the movie, it became the only source of communication between Chu and three of his daughters. Worse case, they only "make announcement" during dinner time, but not communicating. Chu is a single father, who is also a master Chinese chef. In the movie, he is portrayed as a father who isn't good at expressing himself in words but has been trying to shower his daughters with his love in his own way, which is through action and food. On a side note, art is often seemed as a way of expressing emotions and it is often used as a communication tool between a therapist and his patient, especially someone is not used to put things in words. In this case, I would suggest that Mr Chu is using food, which is his strength, as a tool, trying to pull his daughters together. However, his efforts is not seen and appreciated by his daughters, which can be seen from their facial expression at the beginning of the film when they felt like being forced to attend the dinner.

The culinary art performed by Chu is another important element of the background of the film. He insists of taking his time to make sure the dishes are bound with the Chinese traditional culture in culinary art, which has created a lot of scenes of numerous mouth-watering dishes in the movie. However, the distance among them could not be taken away even with the food. From how they are seated apart from each other, to the formal and less intimate conversation, it is obvious that they do not have much connection among them.

Based on the family structure, it is well known to many people that single parent family would face a lot of challenges. It would be even harder for single father as father usually does not communicate well with children due to some gender stereotypes whereas they are lack of the caregiver's characteristics even though they are unlikely to face economic issues because fathers are more likely to be the breadwinner, according to a research. This explains the conflicts in Chu's family.

Talking about the relationship among the family, it’s interesting to see the eldest daughter, Jia Chen who picked up the nurturing role after her mum was dead. She intended to help her dad to support the family. With her strong belief and loyalty as a Christian, she has her own moral system and conscientiousness. That’s why she is quite against how the second daughter, Jia Chien managed her relationship. According to the birth order theory proposed by Adler, the first child will be more socially dominant, independent and perfectionist. This could be seen on Jia Chen when she said that she would be taking care of Mr Chu in future as her two sisters will be married one day. On the other side, she is so stressed when facing questions that surround her (e.g. when she is going to get married) that she even scolded her sister, Jia Chien who intended to concern about her life. It seems like Jia Chen picked up repression as her self-defense mechanism to face her past relationship problem which had left an impact in her life. However, she announced her marriage surprisingly after being chased by a volleyball coach who truly loves her.

When it comes to the fast-paced developed relationship between the youngest daughter, Jia Ning with Jia Ning’s ex-boyfriend, Guo Lun, we can see clearly how their relationship grows day by day. Jia Ning always approached Guo Lun when Guo Lun was waiting for her friend. Jia Ning’s friend always pretended that she had no interest in Guo Lun who put great effort in chasing her. Jia Ning questioned the intention of Guo Lun chasing her friend who didn't seem to have feelings for him and Guo Lun replied that he was addicted to her without a valid reason. While having lunch with Guo Lun, Jia Ning pointed out that love is about the concerns and interaction between two people. Psychologically, this is what we called “Vulnerability”. The more vulnerable you are with someone, the higher chance you are likely to develop a good connection with him. Jia Ning’s friend is a good example who avoid vulnerability, she tried to play cool with Guo Lun, while in fact she confessed that she liked him a lot. Unfortunately, when she voiced this out, Jia Ning had already been in a relationship with Guo Lun. Of course, proximity effect is also one of the factors that blooms the relationship between Jia Ning and Guo Lun.

Besides, we can also see the Westernization of the three daughters. The eldest child, Jia Chen, converted herself into a Christian while Jia Chian, who is the on-the-rise Airline consecutive develops sex-based relationship with her “boyfriend”. In one scene, her boyfriend also revealed that he enjoys with this kind of sexual relationship instead of being couple. As for the youngest child, Jia Ning, worked at the fast-food restaurant even though his father is the Master Chef in Taipei. The cross-cultural influences are salient within the family dynamic in which three daughters are striving their own way to live while their father is still insisting the traditional ritual in the family. However, in the end of the movie, he also revealed that Chinese traditional cuisine was no longer appreciated in Taiwan due to the Western modernization in Taipei. 

When the film progresses, it’s hard to believe that Jia Ning, whose personality was perceived as the cynical and obedient daughter announced that she wanted to move out with her boyfriend because she was pregnant. This announcement has given a great knock to Chu’s family because it gave a head knock to the Chinese conservative culture. And this is followed by the surprise given by Jia Chen who announced that she is married to her boyfriend, Ming Dao in the church. These few examples have clearly indicated the evidence of cross-cultural influence and how it impacts the family with Chinese culture. This impact has generated a gap between Chu and his daughters. It’s also ironic when Chu  declared that he will be living with the woman he likes, Jin Rong and her daughter. Initially, all of his daughters treated it as a joke, which showed that they couldn't really accept the fact that his father likes Jin Rong instead of Mrs Liang. The reason anticipated is probably due to the age differences since Mrs Liang has smaller age differences with Chu. I like the way how this film managed to feature the conflict between the cultural differences and acceptance when it is blended in living style and marriage. 

Despite the life differences between the family members, I like the message delivered by Chu in the last family gathering with Mrs Liang and her daughters. He said that, even though family members are having their own life, but the concerns about each others are the main elements which define the family connections and structure. He also reveals that home is no longer a home when family members left one by one.

Yes, the family togetherness is everything for most, the acceptance in term of cultural differences and generation gap is still one of the important issues that had been addressed in the film, and still need to be addressed in the future. Just like the common issue that is embodied in our community nowadays, the interracial marriage between Chinese and Malay in Malaysia. We still have a lot of parents who disagree with interracial marriage due to the cultural differences and life practices.

We can’t deny that there might be a day where we can accept and embrace cultural differences, that we can live peacefully with everyone else, but we can’t help but to say that it needs a lot of psychological adaptations and acceptance.

Awakenings

“The summer was extraordinary. It was a season of rebirth and innocence, a miracle for 15 patients and for us, their caretakers. But now we have to adjust to the realities of miracles. We can hide behind the veil of science and say it was the drug that failed or that the illness itself had returned or that the patients were unable to cope with losing decades of their lives. But the reality is we don’t know what went wrong anymore than we know what went right. What we do know is that as the chemical window closed another awakening took place — that the human spirit is more powerful than any drug and that is what needs to be nourished with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter. This is what we’d forgotten. The simplest things.” shared by Dr. Sayer from <Awakenings>. It was a lesson learned through pain and tears; a lesson of appreciate and be present in life; a lesson learned through a treatment failure.

This central message of the movie was delivered in multiple approaches from different perspectives in life. I like how it was delivered through an awakening of a catatonic patient and not some professional talkings, which made it more persuasive and relatable to the audience as it was not just said, but played.

The first scene that tried to deliver the message was when Leonard's mother talked about how she blamed everything when his son fell sick but she never felt grateful when she gave birth to a healthy son. This is what every normal person is doing almost every single day. Often times, we notice how negative things have been impacting our life due to  We rarely be grateful of the little positive things, we never realise how fortunate we are to be able to breathe and stay conscious.

The message started to get salient when it came to the midnight call by Leonard to Dr. Sayer.

There was one night when Leonard excitedly called Dr. Sayer to come back to his office and talk about what he had been thinking. 

“Look at this newspaper,” he says, handing him the paper. “What does it say? All bad. It’s all bad. People have forgotten what life is all about. They’ve forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded about what they have and what they can lose, and what I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!”

Then the next morning, Leonard tried to talk to the board of doctors from the hospital and persuade them that he was all fine to go out for a walk. The rejection got him frustrated and he decided to just go out without permission. However he was stopped by the guard and the doctors.

The movie created an unconscious comparison of the movie characters and the audience in the audiences themselves. It reminds the audience could be the ones mentioned that have countless blessings (eg. Health) everyday but never appreciate.

When Leonard tried to get out of the hospital just for a walk but was stopped by the guard and the other doctors, there was a scene shot from Leonard’s view where the hospital door was so close but he was immediately dragged away and the door became further away which soon lost from sight. This scene had immediately changed the audiences’ initial third-person view to first-person view. It enabled the audiences to be put into Leonard’s shoes and feel more empathetic seeing how his freedom was being taken away. Again, the scene strikes the audience with the message of how pathetic a human could be when he could not even decide which direction he is walking to, what he wants to look at, who he wants to talk to and where he wants to go. Yet, it is a freedom, a blessing that we often take for granted.

Seeing the other patients who also experienced the awakenings, it was not all about happiness when having the second chance to be alive again as the a lot of things have changed due to the long period of sleep. Many of them have skipped few of their life stages development and hence there were patients who made life adjustments. While most of the patients were very happy about waking up again, there was a patient who was utterly outstanding when he was asked by Anthony, “Hey how do you feel right now?” I thought the answer will be almost the same as Leonard’s “better than ever”. In fact, the patient did not seem to be happy as his parents were dead, his life was in institution and his son was nowhere to be found. That was the part that made me wonder how I would react and how life would be if I were to be one of them. The counter-factual thinking was induced to help the audience to think about their lives currently and compare it with the patient’s circumstances.

Another part of the film that was worth noted was the romantic interaction of Leonard with Paula. Although Leonard was already in his 40s, his mental age was still in 20s when he lost his consciousness. It would be the stage of “Intimacy vs Isolation” in stage development. I came to a wonder, when the patients are being treated in the hospital and are isolated from the outside world, would their mental development continue or just stop when they started receiving treatment? At the beginning, Anthony said to Dr Sayer, describing the ward as a garden, because the patients are like the plants, as they are unresponsive and the doctors would water them. This would be related to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where they only need to fulfill their basic needs as they did not have their consciousness, they only needed to be fed to stay alive without their own thinking. It explains the reason Leonard decided to stay back at hospital just to talk to Paula, the girl he had crushed on. As his basic needs were fulfilled, he had his own thoughts, he had bigger desire to fulfill the higher hierarchy of needs.

As everything seems to be wonderful, plot twisted with the beginning of Leonard’s negative emotions that rise from the side effect of L-dopa, meanwhile his tics surfaced and grew more. Leonard and the other patients were finally back to catatonic state, just like the poem "The Panther" he pointed at Ouija to Dr Sayer earlier. 

His gaze, from staring through the bars,

has grown so weary that it can take in nothing more.
For him, it is as though there were
a thousand bars; and behind the thousand bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
his powerful strides are like a ritual dance around a center
where a great will stands paralyzed.

At times, the curtains of the eye
lift, without a sound
and a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence of the shoulders,
reaches the heart and dies.  

It was heartbreaking to see someone used to be so lively to fade, more so when he was dying again for the second time. At the same time, the feelings of regret and guilt of Dr Sayer could be felt by seeing the video flashback of how Leonard gained consciousness from his one-decade-sleep because of him, how he got to read, had a crush until he finally had grown more tics and fell into deep sleep again. The movie tried to put the audience to view the summary of what had happened through Dr Sayer's perspective whereas the audience got to experience the feelings, the sense of helplessness as if we had given someone hope but it was then taken away, without our permission.

However, I was amazed by Dr Sayer’s spirit when he first found how the patients would borrow the will of other objects but was not agreed by any other doctor in the field. In the world that conformity is so common, I am utterly grateful of how he was stern about his discovery and the efforts he took to prove everyone else wrong, which led to the awakenings. Even though the drug failed in the end, the awakenings have been worthwhile as the message to be present in life, to be appreciative of what we have now, was perfectly presented.