The PTSD Viewer

There are times I want to watch a film, I've decided on the film but inevitably I back away from it due to feeling too closely connected with the scenes I've watched. Especially if they're perceived to be 'mentally unstable'. There's a feeling you get straightaway where you feel it's glorifying a certain aspect, a certain angle that I don't like. I can't explain it sometimes but in the pursuit of achieving a certain facet of reality - perhaps certain artistic liberties and licences have been stretched to the point where it becomes unedifying for the viewer to watch. Especially someone who might be of an occasional nervous disposition. 

I know for example the film David and Lisa was a film I had to stop within 5 minutes of it opening because there was the line "A touch can kill, a touch can kill" and its delivery plus the editing as the line is being said that left me in an uncontrollable heap of tears. Even remembering that scene still brings me close to tears, if I haven't succumbed already. I don't know of (m)any people who have watched the film, but if it's a good or great film, I'll never know because that scene completely wiped me out.

Similarly in the opening of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden had something in the opening minutes of the film that pushed me away because I had a feeling that I couldn't trust myself to feel detached enough that I could watch this without feeling like I was going to have a reaction that I was not comfortable with. By all means, as an audience you're supposed to be shaken up while watching a film but there's a thin line where it becomes less an experience and more of an assault. When a film resembles traumas you've had, it's harder to enjoy a film on its own merits.

If you're of sound mind, then these things possibly could be water off a duck's back and all the possible clichés that we've come to expect from modern living. If you've carried traumas throughout your life, some films are akin to PTSD and by inflicting these, there is a balance that has to be met regardless of whether said 'victim' should be watching these films in the first place. I would not be one of those who advocate for confrontational therapy should said person not want to go through with it. After all, health, however relative, must prevail along with overall sanity.

As an avid film watcher, I know that I too often run into something with an interesting premise and then when I start watching it, it more often than not preys on an emotion that's rooted in trauma and I have to back out. It's the fault of growing old, of life experiences conniving to deal you a bitter hand and one you can't bear watching because it feels like you're viewing your mistakes again. Films can confront but alternatively films are escapist too. Either you can stop watching or perhaps see how cinema began. Whatever makes you feel comfortable is what helps at the end of it all.