Screen/Society--Special Event--"Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian"

Film Screening: "Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian" (Arnaud Desplechin, 2013, 117 min, USA/France, in English, Color, Blu-Ray) / Directed by the French director Arnaud Desplechin, this 2013 English-language movie is based on a memoir by the Hungarian-Jewish ethnologist/psychoanalyst Georges Devereux about his work with Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Indian and Second World War veteran. Starring Benicio del Toro as Jimmy P. and Mathieu Amalric as Devereux, this is a compelling movie about war, religion, colonial politics, exile, and otherness. It is also a film about the importance of language, about the difference words can make in our relations to others. The director has a long-standing interest in philosophy, and has worked with the American Philosopher Stanley Cavell. Georges Devereux (born Gyorgy Dobo) is not acknowledged as one of the founders of ethnopsychiatry, along with Haitian psychiatrist Louis Mars (who also taught comparative psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas, where the film is set). This film invites an unusually wide range of interdisciplinary responses. / "Avoiding the usual therapy-drama story beats, Desplechin has made a densely satisfying drama about Freud, racism, and sympathy in its largest sense." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe / Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBtHKRy1Ns