The Lighting of Shadow Images: Interview with Giuseppe Tornatore

The most common approach used by both Jungian and Freudian analysts when approaching cinema is to analyze, interpret and amplify films to explore their content, archetypal issues and symbolic aspects. My research on the comparison between Active Imagination and the language of film focuses on reversing this process. This means we, Jungian analysts, are not the ones to analyze, interpret and amplify films, but instead we let films and filmmakers speak first. This is also why I decided to make a video-interview in which Oscar-awarded director Giuseppe Tornatore confronts and allows himself to be challenged by Jung’s concept of Active Imagination for the first time. The interview was carried out in Rome in August 2019, in the projection room of Tornatore’s office. According to Carl Gustav Jung, a term or image is symbolic when it means more than it denotes or expresses (Jung, 1961). The objects and images we find in these rooms are highly symbolic. Each one encapsulates the passion, the value and the meaning of doing cinema.… But there is more. These objects and images also recall something else, something individual and collective. With no need for explanation, these objects and images speak directly to our unconscious more than to our consciousness. Just like cinema does. The reason I am here today with Giuseppe Tornatore, is my desire to speak to him about the correlation between analytical psychology and cinema. To do so, I have decided to ask him about the way he understands cinema, the way he makes films, and how his way of working is similar to Active Imagination, the process defined by Jung as the preferred method to face the unconscious. Active Imagination is a method or, even better, an attitude that seems to be related not only to cinema in general, but, in particular, to screenwriting first, and then to the making of a film. CT = Chiara Tozzi GT = Giuseppe Tornatore First of all, thank you Giuseppe for welcoming me into the projection room of your office. And thank you for this unique opportunity. Are you familiar with Carl Gustav Jung’s Active Imagination? I have heard of it, but just vaguely. Even better! I will describe to you the four phases of Active Imagination, based on the description given by M.-L. von Franz (von Franz, 1980). I will ask you some questions to verify the possible correlation between the way you make a film and Active Imagination. The first phase can be defined as letting things happen. An emptying of one’s mind that Jung described as doing by not doing. A receptive abandonment, a willingness to be open to images with no interferences of the consciousness. Do you find any similarities between all of this and the way you approach the development of an idea or a plot to make a film? I totally relate to this. Yes, the best ideas often come when you are truly—unconsciously rather than consciously—able to empty your mind from all that load of unaccomplished ideas, hints and suggestions that you carry with you and that you collected throughout your life. It is difficult to empty your mind. When it happens and, as I said, it happens unintentionally, we may experience what is commonly referred to as eureka moments. But this is exactly how an idea comes to you: with simplicity and clarity which, from that moment on, will guide you toward the focus of that idea, giving you the strength to shape it and make it real. It is a very important process. At times, it may not only happen when you are able to empty yourself, but also when you experience a kind of resignation; when you have the feeling that everything you are working and perfecting your thoughts on is completely useless. At some point you give up, you slacken your grip, you let yourself go. And right then, when you don’t want it anymore, when you are not thinking about it, nor are you hoping for it, something comes to you. Later, if you happen to think about it, you find out that what mysteriously came to you is not at all unrelated to what you had previously been pursuing. It is like a wonderful synthesis that takes place naturally in your mind, but only reveals itself when, in some way, you let go. It is a mysterious yet fascinating mechanism. And I am aware of it. This is exactly what Carl Gustav Jung described when referring to this attitude of abandonment, emptying and reception, which is entirely different from intentional research. Your experience is truly relevant and enlightening. We have now reached the second phase of Active Imagination which occurs when, according to Jung, you also start to consciously accept the irrational and incomprehensible. At this point, the images examined by consciousness become real, they come to life, they change. Can you tell us something about your creative process when the images for one of your films start coming to life? Of course! This phase is almost the opposite of the previous one. In my life, I have had the good fortune and privilege to also experience this second phase, meaning that I found a logical key through which what can be defined as “logical” from a psychological point of view appears in the language of cinema to be totally irrational, illogical, metaphysical, crazy, unreasonable. This happened to me for the first time with reference to the film A Pure Formality, when the rational research for something exciting for me led me to confront myself with topics that had nothing rational about them. I was interested in studying the repression mechanisms that help human beings survive the most tragic events of their existence. When analyzing these systems, I took the risk of considering what I imagined to be the most tragic experience a person can have—suicide. Well, we repress all shocking experiences. And I had arbitrarily defined a law—which may not exist, but it did in my imagination—that set a direct proportional relation between the gravity of the trauma to be repressed and the speed of repression. As a result, when venturing to reason in this way, the idea came to me that the amount of time needed to repress suicide is shorter than the time that separates life from death. In the experience of the person committing suicide, this creates an infinitesimal time frame, shorter than the space-time that great authors already understood, as Dostoevsky for example, who separated the consciousness of being alive from the lack of consciousness, i.e., from being dead. In this time frame, so short and immeasurable, the person committing suicide has already repressed the act of suicide, and therefore doesn’t know. This is the “madness” that led me to imagine a long interrogation in which, in the end, a police commissioner has to help a writer, suspected of murder, discover that, not only is he a murderer, but he is also the victim of the person committing suicide. So sometimes, giving space, keeping your mind open to what may seem to be completely against all rules, against any reasoning, can reveal itself as a source of imagination or extraordinary vision. This is exactly what happened to me in that case. So yes, I can say I relate to this second phase of Jung’s Active Imagination. I really did and do love that film, and I totally agree with this fascinating parallel. The third phase of Active Imagination is the recording of images transforming themselves. It consists in objectifying imaginary content by giving them an expression in different ways, for example through writing, painting, sculpture, music, dance…. It seems to me that this phase can definitely be compared to screenwriting and the actual shooting of a film. Can you tell us about your shift from imagination to writing and ultimately to the shooting of a film? I can start by saying there is no doubt that this process is common to and frequent among those who deal with cinema, more than the two previous phases, which in my opinion are exceptional cases. But in general, when you embrace an idea that has already developed in your mind, to the point of taking the shape of a story studded with characters that little by little originate within you by virtue of your need to create stories, a continuous imagination process inevitably begins. This definitely includes the moments of your day when you consciously work, write, jot down the idea for one or more characters, draft the outline of the story, and then you start to unfold it and develop it. But this imaginative process goes further and also develops when you are not working on that story. What I mean is that from the moment a story and characters somehow take over your imagination as well as your willingness to go further on that narrative journey, that imagination becomes ever-present. You write and already imagine certain situations, you see them. You see the mood, the light. You sometimes hear certain sounds, certain effects, whether realistic or imaginary. Musical suggestions also come to you. And again, fragments of dialogue start coming to you. Given a story, given a character, you may think of a dialogue, a line, and in that moment, you may not know where to place it, but you feel it could have an extraordinary and amazing relevance to the context that gradually starts to take shape. This imaginative process goes on even when you are having lunch, dinner, when you are in a taxi or on the street. It is ongoing. And it continuously sends you visual and sound suggestions of situations, visions and environments. You start to imagine an environment where you may set an important moment of your story, a main scene, and you may not know yet whether it will be the beginning or the end, or maybe the turning point of that story, therefore in the middle or at one-third or two-thirds. This imaginative process never ends. After completing the screenplay and reviewing it several times, when it seems to be over, you persuade yourself that you truly reached the final result. You have the feeling that the imaginative process is over, and you think that you no longer need it, but that is not the case. The imaginative process continues. It continues when you start talking with producers, with sponsors, when you start talking with your co-workers, when you tell the story to your co-producers or to the officer of a TV company who might finance your film. And sometimes, based on their reaction, your imagination corrects you. There may be an idea that you initially considered very strong and perfect, but based on someone’s reaction, you understand it can still be perfected. It becomes an amazing kaleidoscope of imaginative provocation, to the point of even becoming perdition for you. You may lose your way, your direction. But if your relationship with that story is healthy, strong, and it has been healthy and strong since the very beginning, this awareness will help you keep your direction and know how to discern what the madness of this imaginative process can make you lose. And at that point you are able to understand what is right and what is wrong, what you need and what is useless. But this is a never-ending process. Even when images are already alive, in front of you, in front of the camera, and the characters have a body, a colour, a personality, a way of walking, of talking, and that famous line that miraculously struck you one day found its place. … Once again you may understand that you could also do things differently, that you may change direction. Just like Flaiano once said: In cinema, when you have a good idea, just do the opposite. This is really, truly interesting, also because it takes us back to the definition of Active Imagination given by a renowned follower of Jung, Gerhard Adler, who defined Active Imagination as an attitude rather than a technique, which seems quite similar to what you are saying (Adler, 1948). Yes, of course. But what happens during the creative process happens unconsciously. I believe it happens exactly because you are not familiar with Jung’s theory about this. Then maybe one day you read one of his essays and you understand it exactly because you can relate to the experiences you lived first-hand. And this may be the best way to make the most out of the essays, the theories by great authors, researchers and scholars such as C. G. Jung. Reading and understanding them because you relate to them. You relate to them because you already went through some of those experiences in a primitive way, without understanding the technical foundations, whether by Jung, Adler or others. This is exactly the focus of my research: the possibility of finding correlations between Active Imagination and other fields, which are natural and spontaneous as they really come from the same matrix, defined by Jung as the collective unconscious. Our journey has now taken us to the fourth and last phase of Active Imagination, when you reach the heart of a true dialogue with the unconscious through an ethical confrontation with anything previously created by imagination. This is probably the phase that most differentiates the Jungian methodology from other psychotherapeutic methods and meditation practices. Ego-consciousness ethically talks with the unconscious images. By giving value and respecting the images, the ego-consciousness takes a stance. It makes a choice. What does the ethical confrontation with the characters and content of your films mean for you? Well, here the horizon stretches. And I feel that this idea by Jung is, in its essence, endless. I can’t find an immediate correlation with the experience of making a film. Actually, I feel it includes it. But it also includes many other common human experiences. Those who make cinema are also human beings, and therefore the ethical issue goes beyond simply falling in love with a certain story to then turn it into a film. The dialogue with yourself, between your consciousness and your unconscious, is a very complex relationship. It continuously marks your existence, in all those moments when this relation can produce images, narrative products, representations or simply regarding a certain behaviour. But it may also not produce anything like this. This experience, this field is boundless. But since you are challenging me to talk about cinema, my answer is yes, it is all continuously there, throughout the entire creative process. I could therefore say that, in my opinion, what happens in this fourth phase not only goes beyond the first three, but it also embeds them as this process can also be found in the first three phases. When I have a fascinating idea, I immediately ask myself if it is right or wrong for that story to exist. If it is right for other people to know it. If it can do good or bad. If it can comfort certain conditions of the human being. If it can mitigate certain suffering and if it helps to add value to the experience of knowledge. I immediately ask myself if that idea can have an ethical function. And if you find out that this function is not there or, even worse, if you realize it is there but it has a negative, then you reach a moment of You start I do it or it right or You start to which is very It is an and dialogue with yourself, which occurs in the most sometimes by and you and to answer the questions coming from your unconscious. you are not and you you you you process. Your characters, you as your life for some of your life journey, ask you questions you can’t even answer at This sometimes those moments when we feel There is a moment when you feel that story, that of images that to seems to you. There are when this you with a and there are moments when this its back on you and seems to its most This is how I experience it. You can face these moments by yourself questions and to find also yourself through referring to which is very different even can help you a that makes you feel in a between you and what you to This does not mean such a be At times, a film can also be really just like A Pure or other But even in those in those need to a between yourself and what you are Just to give you a the first film I The was about about And I that when you tell certain stories, even if you don’t want you the This has been the case. And I accept it, as a person who was in and as a person who had a very strong of in those I still have it, but when I was it was even I I to tell a story that on the one help give the to know a we but on the other I that same I to to give a and means to it. I was in a And I that this led me to create an an that the down and him a in his In that my confrontation with myself led me to change the story to a a in the who all his to become a It was like the process of the toward a and to the most the of the a that was opposite from what I with is as it is in cinema. But it is When a you to in a certain way, exactly when you start a confrontation with yourself, which can sometimes in a that will be to you and but sometimes that may turn out to be a that is only to you and but in it is an and in a for you and for others. even worse, it may be to you but not to which may be the at for the way I see it. it seems to me that of the four phases, this last phase is the most yet the most It truly seems the not only for those who stories, but also for the development of one’s and the relationship with the and everything that has been able to create in of stories, for the human who is still the most mysterious in our In as I was saying both Active Imagination in a and methodology to analytical ethical in the fourth phase of Active Imagination, are what truly and Jung’s approach from other psychological and psychotherapeutic because they take the individual to a just like you are one is that of the ego-consciousness with what happens in the and the other is within with the content and that one’s images can What you just now us regarding the of your The is very because you your ethical to the story, this confrontation between And since the characters are then on the the the and of that But keep in mind that I that experience because it was the most and the to as an I believe the of the developed and by Jung is I don’t think that when Jung talks about and confrontation with from an ethical he is only referring to the of what is right and what is This is maybe the and most But the ethical confrontation in the fourth phase seems more And in my opinion, it definitely in to the first three phases, all the most mysterious of our and our way of to and to others. 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A great director I had the privilege of once you want a of a that is through a or wonderful moment of their life, the from At first, I and I not even with the best in the will you be able to the in the way the can imagine it by the from Even to is When you a who to they are something it is If you tell it through the will be able to imagine it than how you could it. how complex our way of to and our imagination is, the relation with through our ethical of what we what we want to what we can do and what we can’t able to think about this is truly amazing and This takes us back to what I was saying at the beginning of this that is, the of symbolic images. 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I believe he this process when referring to you so you us will the Jungian as well as else, important and you and the you us open rather than are symbolic they are not in the but from you,