A girl betrayed by her lover does not die after a suicide attempt. Instead, she loses her mind, becoming a helpless autistic child. Realizing the consequences of his betrayal, the young man kidnaps her from the psychiatric clinic, perhaps hoping that his attentive, penitent presence will restore her memory and sanity. Reunited, they wander aimlessly through the beautiful landscapes of Japan—a tragic pair of beggars bound together by a red string. Dressed as characters from a Japanese tragic play about doomed lovers, they seem either to embark on a path of redemption or to live out their ill-fated fate as outcasts.
Recognize the film? It’s Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls.
Recently, it became the subject of discussion in an existential psychological film club. We had a fascinating debate that could perhaps be distilled into the question: Should psychotherapy be grounded in rationality, systematically eliminating everything in the client’s experience that disrupts proven therapeutic frameworks… Or does it also allow room for attentiveness and trust in the client’s personal imagery and symbols, their intuition about what might heal them—however naive or futile it may seem?
In other words, should the young man in the film have found a job, paid for his beloved’s expensive clinic and white-coated professionals, and brought her oranges and flowers in his spare time (perhaps that’s what responsible adult behavior would look like in trying to atone and compensate for harm from the perspective of rational psychotherapy) instead of dragging her around on a leash, dragging her into his games of guilt? Or could it be that these aren’t games at all, but rather his way of joining the girl’s inner world, following what she truly needs to recover? This journey, which seems meaningless to sane (or clever?) observers, and the childlike contemplation of the world beside a caring and reliable companion, seems at some point in the film to have sparked the return of rationality in the girl.
One of the discussion participants put it this way: If I had to go mad, I’d rather wander among blooming cherry blossoms with someone who loves me than sit doped up on antipsychotics in the walls of the best psychiatric clinic.
Today, I realized this resonates with me more than rationality. I recalled how, instead of my usual way of coping with the chaos and absurdity of the world through dark humor and cynicism (what could be more rational?), a new resource entered my life—a fairy tale (what could be more illusory?). But that’s another story entirely…
