Jimmy P. (Psychothérapie d'un Indien des Plaines)

JIMMY P. is structurally a mess. Director Arnaud Desplechin is never quite sure what he wants the film to say: whether it comments on the status of Native Indians in postwar Amerıca; the suspicious status of much activity going under the name of psychology; life in institutions based on locking people up and asking questions later; or asking us to reflect on the fine dividing line between madness and sanity.

The plot is a straightforward one: Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro), a Native Indian veteran of World War II, suffers from terrible headaches. Confined to an institution, he comes under the care of maverick psychologist Georges Devereux (Benicio Del Toro), who nurses Picard back to health through a series of insistent questions while probing deeply into his sexual past. There is only one snag: Devereux's background is equally shady; he might or might not be a practicing psychiatrist, and he himself undergoes therapy at the end of the film.

Shot in atmospheric colorlessness, the film recreates a world where anyone differing from racial or psychological norms - as constructed by whites - is automatically identified as deviant, and hence not worth treating. It is only due to Devereux's persistence that Picard recovers at all; and even then, the psychiatrist has to browbeat the institution's director Dr. Menninger (Larry Pine) into agreement.

The actual process of recovery is perfunctorily handled; while the racial themes become lost in a convoluted subplot involving Devereux's friend Madeleine (Gina McKee), Howard Shore's musical score is unnecessarily intrusive, its syrupy fat chords directing attention away from Picard's soliloquy describing his mental state, almost as if director Desplechin was under the impression that viewers could not concentrate on words alone.

The ending is equally unsatisfactory, as we have no idea what will happen to Picard, once released from the institution. He vows to see his family, but the potential traumas presented by the workaday world after such a long time spent in confinement are simply left unexplored. In many ways JIMMY P. is something of a wasted opportunity to make a comment on discrimination and its consequences in America's past.

Firstly, I'm not a movie buff nor am I an expert on the director or anyone else involved in making this movie, I just watch movies based on whether or not I fancy watching them.

The acting left me with a feeling of warmth towards the characters, sure it's not a short film, and some of the scenes could probably have been shorter, but I feel that would've taken away from the tonality. The movie seems well written and likable, but the pacing and content won't be everyone's 'cup of tea'.

In short, the movie is good, it's not an action movie, there's almost no excitement, but who would read the synopsis and think there would be any? There's really nothing left to say about this film as far as I can see, I'd recommend it, but not to everyone, and can't see a group of lads sitting round with cans of lager enjoying it, it's more of a 'sit and watch alone' type of thing.

The visuals in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian are almost, almost worth the price of admission. The opening scene of the film beautifully articulates setting and irony by showing the grassy plains of America while Native American flute music is played in the backdrop. It's a comforting, soft opening to a film that is erected predominately off of complex discussion and ideology.

The film stars Benicio Del Toro in a role he clearly embraced and enjoyed, playing Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Indian, who has returned from war with seriously debilitating symptoms, most specifically, a crippling headache. Jimmy is placed under the care of George Devereux (Mathieu Amalric), a real-life French doctor and anthropologist, who specializes in ethnology and psychoanalysis. The two meet together and form a quaint bond between their lengthy discussions about Native American history and culture, stemming from Devereux's desire to learn about the culture, as an anthropologist often does and Jimmy's checkered past, which involves troubled love and a teenage daughter that another man is raising.

With the right directorial methods and smooth, engaging writing, Jimmy P. could easily be a film that one can effortlessly sink into, investing in its characters and learning a thing or two about psychological methods. It just so happens that my semester of high school psychology delved into Freudian ideas and psychoanalysis quite extensively, both principles are based on three key ideas: the inner conscious and unconscious act as dueling forces in the mind, the discussion and population of defense mechanisms in order for people to cope or estrange themselves from their past, and the idea that dreaming means more than disjointed shows that play in your head while you sleep.

Making a film centered around often complex and occasionally droning material, especially when that film is about the founding days of a division in psychology, is unbelievably challenging, so based on that, it's surprising to say Jimmy P. succeeds as well as it does. French director and co-writer Arnaud Desplechin (who wrote the film with Julie Peyr and Kent Jones, respectively) does all he can to make the film as absorbing as possible, and for the first hour or so, his efforts are effective, as we watch Jimmy and Devereux invest in some great conversational banter that is geared more towards cultural relativism than it is in trying to structure cheap and expected payoffs. However, the film runs out of gas when you realize just how stiff and frequently dull the material gets. Perhaps it really is no fault of the trio of writers, nor Desplechin himself, but the fact that the ideas presented in the film are difficult to make engaging on an entertainment level.

Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian works for a little while because it's interesting to see how a significant subsector of psychology was born by a doctor who was clearly interested in learning about different walks of life and the makeup of cultures and people of groups he didn't belong to. Amalric embodies the mindset of an anthropologist/psychologist quite nicely here, effectively making for a character we can appreciate. However, the stiffness of the film catches up to it, with the film's discussions in its second and third act becoming greatly long-winded and the entire project slowly running out of steam before reaching the conclusion. Rather than rewarding and captivating, the ending comes off a long-awaited conclusion to a film that was so close to making a film about psychology absorbing for two hours.

Starring: Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric. Directed by: Arnaud Desplechin.

watched it cause it was on TV and I was browsing around and just wanted to see what Benicio was up to. I knew the French guy as well cause I'm being a girl like that so I figured its some sort of indie movie going on. It was nothing glorious about his injury and if you didn't deal with existential angst and having to be honest with yourself and face the mistakes you made ... and the situations that tormented you in the back of your mind there's no point in watching it. Nobodys perfect and there's no way in hell that hes going to make some majestic awesome magical choices that's going to blow your mind :)) and the end is not all happy superlucky cause lifes not like that. you just go on living and have more pain inflicted upon you and find ways to cope with it like watching way too much TV or alcohol and so on..

Each of us springs from cultures that form our worldview, guide our behavior, create our sensibilities. But non-whites, especially, are coerced into discarding that identity and, through acculturation, becoming someone that they really aren't, someone who, over time, can no longer understand why they dream of a bear, a fox, and a baby and what in the world those images mean. An early scene in Jimmy P shows a white doctor asking Jimmy to respond to a picture he's shown of some white demonic guy with a knife in what looks like an operating room. Jimmy can't free associate anything from that picture. Not because he's crazy, but because it's meaningless to him. But later he can uncover meaning in a dream that includes a bear, a fox, and a baby.

Over a generation or two, Jimmy has lost many connections to his own past and cultural traditions. Although he can still sense them, he can't interpret them as they relate to his own psychological issues. He's broken laws that the dominant cultural doesn't regard as criminal at all. Not understanding this, he punishes himself even though freed by a white court of law.

Although Thunderheart may have been more entertaining, Jimmy P is enlightening about the psychic damage that happens when cultural and ethnic peoples are punished for who they are and made to ape other cultures to become accepted.