Musing & Movies

By: Daniel Westheimer

I am starting a new processing group here at FRT, something that has been in the works since I got hired by Fab back in September. The group itself is special to me, connecting my skills as a counselor with my love of the arts. I thought it would be helpful to give a back story to what brought me here in order to set the scene.

I didn’t come to this career in a conventional way. Before the pandemic I was an actor and improviser, predominately working in a bunch of small store front theaters throughout the Chicago Area. When COVID continued for more than a month or so, I felt stagnant as an artist and decided to pivot careers. In that decision I gained a new passion and vocation, but I also lost a part of myself. It wasn’t the time on stage or performance that I missed, it was the community that being an artist brought me. Losing the collaborative nature of being a stage actor, in turn made me feel out of touch with the community-oriented part of myself that I had  been accessible since my parents enrolled me in acting classes during my homeschool-years.

Since leaving the arts I’ve been trying to find ways to reconnect to that aspect of myself and creative identity in my own way. From 2020-2023 my partner and I ran a thrift business. This scratched the itch for self-expression, and gave me a sense of community with fellow vintage sellers and buyers, but those connections felt transactional and it was not sustainable once I started practicing therapy full time. Continuing my search for ways to expand my artistic desires, I found myself becoming more intentional engaging with pop-culture, especially with film. I’ve always loved movies, but over the last few years I’ve become more passionate about engaging in cinema as a way to extend my relationship to acting, performance and community. I started to shift the way I consumed media. Rather than passively watching something to have something on in the background, I started watching movies the way I had to read a play and do text analysis during my BFA. I watched movie after movie, mostly by myself for myself.

For some, movies are about escapism, but it’s never been about that for me. When I watch movies, I notice shifts in myself: emotionally, physiologically and intellectually. Watching the 17 minute Ballet in the Red Shoes, I feel myself catch my breath and notice how the beauty of the cinematography brings a smile to my face. Watching the Zone of Interest, I feel a pit of my stomach form which, given time to process, turns into sobs. But my transformations don’t just show up in emotional responses, they also shift worldviews. They can help us look back, in order to look forward. As a young person, Wall-E affected how I thought about our environmental impact on the world and the passive nature that most human operate. More recently, I spent inauguration day watching Kramer’s Judgement of Nuremberg- a movie about the complicity and culpability of a nation's people when their government enacts horrible crimes on the marginalized members of their community. Watching the film helped me explore and think about how ignorance in the face of fascism is an intentional choice that we must acknowledge and challenge.

As I waded into the unknown with the Trump presidency, I thought about how alone and powerless most of my clients felt. How I felt. I spent time curating and writing about movies from the past and what they have to say about our present moment.  In sharing my thoughts with my friends about, A Face in the Crowd or All the Kings Men, I was able to clarify my thoughts more fully on the populist nature of our current regime. In thinking about Network or Sweet Smell of Success, I could speak more clearly on the power of the press. I took these thoughts I'd been having on my own, and shared them with my friends. In sharing with my friends, I started to feel less alone.

Watching movies can be a solo endeavor, but it doesn’t have to be. I think about how powerful it felt to see Barbie on opening day. Every person in that audience wore pink and showed up as their authentic selves. It was reminiscent of the midnight Harry Potter book drops at Borders Books or a Marvel movie premier pre-Endgame. A bookstore or a theater full of people, wanting a type of closeness, a sense of community.

There’s something powerful that can happen when you watch movies with other people. It can challenge someone to lean in, put down their phone and connect more fully with the information on the big screen. It can give one permission to laugh out loud or to express an emotion that would stay silent if they were by themself. Literally the chemistry in one's body changes when they watch with other people instead of watching alone. I believe that watching movies can be a powerful tool to build community, foster empathy, and expand our knowledge base when done intentionally. When art is discussed and explored together, it can push us to learn more about ourselves and each other and the world around us. Critical analysis of film doesn’t have to come in the form of a Letterboxd review or New Yorker article. When done warmly, with purpose, it can look like the type of discussion one has collaboratively with friends at a local bar.

Working in private practice has its collaborative moments, but overall it is inherently an individual pursuit. I work one-on-one with clients forming one-on-one connections. And while individual therapy is  collaborative in nature, in the end there is a type of hierarchy or separation that keeps the client-counselor relationship as ethical as possible. Forming an honest, authentic relationship with my clients is important to me, and while we therapists cannot divulge every intimate detail of ourselves or our lives to our clients, I have found pop-culture and my client’s/my thoughts on pop-culture to be one of the strongest connective tissues to building an authentic connection.

In order to synthesize those connections and enhance them on a larger scale, an idea of a different type of group therapy was formed: A therapy group with a goal to process the experience of watching movies and practice identifying what movies say about our world, together. A type of group that uses the appreciation of film to form a type of appreciation of those we’re surrounded by. A group that combines FRT’s value of community oriented mental health with a deep love of cinema.

Last month I got to do a test run of Film Reel Therapy (FRT) @ FRT with a few of my peers, and it got me feeling excited about pursuing the movie processing group further. We watched Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain as a group and then processed our thoughts and feelings about the movie together. I chose A Real Pain because of its themes around grief and because of my identity as a Jewish clinician. It was so fulfilling to hear a bunch of therapists, all of whom have different identities and worldviews, share their takeaways, perspectives and questions about the movie. The first time I watched A Real Pain I did so in an empty theatre. I was charmed by the movie and it affected me emotionally, but there were moments where I was left cold. In watching the movie for a second time, surrounded by others, I found myself finding new aspects to appreciate. In discussing the film afterwards, I was able to see what folks that don’t hold my white, Jewish identity and folks who have a different relationship to grief, take away from  the film. The process shifted my thoughts of the movie, but even more so it changed how I see myself within the community I am a part of.

Now more than ever we have to continue to work to build and invest in community. The Film Reel Therapy group asks participants to watch movies as a communal activity and then engage in thoughtful dialogue about the movies, through a mental health lens. We ask our members to not only think and talk critically about the films we watch, but also to think about the somatic, physiological and emotional experience of what it's like to watch movies together.

We’re choosing not to announce what the film will be before each screening, in part due to how many folks that attended said “I never would’ve watched this movie without this group,” but I do like the idea of giving a little sneak peek into the themes or topics as a special preview.

The film we’re covering next on April 25th, will be about friendship, isolation, loss and growth. I hope to see you there!