BRING HER BACK
Очисти душу
Призови ангела.
Подражай смерти.
Поглоти тело.
Очисти душу.
(Spoiler Alert for the film Bring Her Back)
I first heard PJ Harvey on the radio on her 1995 smash hit “Down by the Water”. I went to the Warehouse, the only place in town to buy CDs at the time, but all they had was a copy of her debut Dry (1992). That one had a song titled “Water” on it, but I wasn’t sure it was the song I was looking for and I couldn’t afford risking the princely sum of $15.99. “Gosh,” I wondered, “how many songs about water did this lady have?”
I recalled only the whispered ending: “Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water / come back here, man, give me my daughter” over those creepy tremolo strings. I didn’t have a thought of what the song was “about”. I was intrigued because it sounded like she was casting some kind of spell. Murder ballads, Nick Cave, Bossa Nova, none of this would have registered to me as a pre-teen. I was in the 6th grade, so 11 or 12 years old.
In a Spin interview (2005), Harvey complained that “People assume my songs are autobiographical, but I’m not a dark person like the characters in my songs. Some critics have taken my writing so literally to the point that they’ll listen to ‘Down by the Water’ and believe I have actually given birth to a child and drowned her.”
Now as an adult, Harvey’s song calls to mind Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” which I also wouldn’t have thought to be about infanticide until I saw Nath Ann Carrera, our generation’s greatest goth diva scholar and tremendously talented songwriter themself, explain it in their show based on Gentry’s work. The protagonist of Gentry’s song and Billie Joe are seen together throwing something off the Tallahatchie bridge in the second verse, after all. Carrera posits that the something is their love-child. Gentry said the thing being thrown wasn’t the point, but rather that the song was “a study in unconscious cruelty” – a topic dear to my heart and central, I think, to Motherhood.
I don’t like horror movies: one of the myths I tell myself about myself. But then every few years I see one that really inspires and seems to unlock something within me. (Other favorites are Jordan Peele’s Us and Ari Aster’s Midsommar. James Ross’ short Don’t Blink is another recent favorite - highly recommended. I’d include Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu but saw it more as a campy ballet; a romance, really.)
I kept seeing trailers for Bring Her Back the last few months, so often that I thought maybe the algorithm was pointing its bony finger at my subconscious, knew something about me before I did. I saw it by myself recently, in the midst of a very underslept and tremendously bad mood, having read a synopsis so I’d have a sense of what I was in for.
So: the movie is fantastic and I highly recommend everybody watch it. Admittedly, I’m biased, but it ticked a lot of boxes for me: Mommy / Children, Dental Trauma, elder sibling abuse, Magick/Ritual, Grief-into-madness, and bootleg VHS tapes. Honestly, Sally Hawkins’ ridiculous hairdo is the secret star of the film.
What is it that was so moving to me? When the directors, the Philippou twins (Twins– another personal obsession) note that it’s not necessarily a horror film so much as a film about grief, they’re not just being canny marketers. It’s truly a Mourning and Melancholia trip. The shadow of the object falling on the ego, etc.
In order for Laura’s spell to work, it takes three bodies: the lost loved one (Cathy), the vessel for the Angel (Oliver), and a new body (Piper), as the Host for the original lost soul. The exact mechanics of the ritual are gratifyingly obscure, as are the source, (barely) translated from Russian. We don’t know how Laura first contacts the Angel, nor where she gets the tape. We’re meant to chalk this up to grief. By the time the film begins, she’s already painted the ceremonial circle around her palatial property (not too shabby for a social worker, maybe they’re paid differently in Australia?)
Music serves a small but fruitful purpose. Laura plays loud music at crucial moments, seemingly to distract herself, but later on to drown out other sounds. “Untouched” by the Veronicas (a new song to me) does some lovely work in the clip below. Another scene makes excellent use of Queen Yoko’s “Why”, so on the nose as to be perfect.
I guess A24 couldn’t afford Peej’s synch license, oh well.
Early in the film, the foster mother/monster Laura qualifies her authority, explaining to Andy: “I’m a counsellor. People pay to talk to me, yeah? So you don’t have to be so defensive.” Her house, decor, taste and general vibe seem to signal art teacher, but no – she’s a fucking Therapist. An indictment of social workers – another tick box for me. Later in the film, she brilliantly misapplies Freud’s transference to convince Andy that he’s hallucinating, or at least associating, making a connection between an indoor shower and an impending rainstorm. Guess I should note that my own mom’s name is Laura. Like Oliver I also feel burdened, impregnated by her grief. Still looking for my Host to vomit said grief into, but that’s why I use the couch in my own analysis. I also love cantaloupe and have since I was a kid.
I balked at Andy’s braces, he’s supposedly just shy of 18. Okay, maybe in Australia… I thought it was to make him seem younger, but then they’re used cunningly in the final scenes. And obviously serve as a contrast to all the other fucked up tooth stuff in the film.
One very sweet thing I enjoyed (again: Spoiler) is that of all the disgusting and violent things that happen in the film, often with telling foreshadowing, is that the kitty cat, who we’re all certain is going to meet a grisly end… doesn’t? He ends up fine, I think? Kitty power.
And the film hits lots of Psychoanalytic notes for me. The Primal Scene is here, in the sense that the first thing we see is the Tari tape being filmed by what sure looks like a family. And Primal Scene indeed in the sense that it is broken, longed-for and unrecoverable. We do get a glimpse of Andy and Piper’s dad but only insofar as his death sets the plot in motion. We’re told he’s quite a bad Dad, but do we believe Andy? He has braces, and doesn’t always tell the whole truth, after all. Crucially, we never see nor hear nor have any sense of Cathy’s father. So, missing and dead Dads, unsubtle invocation that the only father figure we see (again, aside from the grainy VHS of Tari tapes, which, I don’t speak Russian) is a ghost, Hamlet teas for real.
In an almost too-perfect touch, the actor Stephen Phillips, who plays Phil, Andy and Piper’s father, is in fact the real life father of Jonah Wren Phillips, the very talented actor who plays Oliver (fka Connor).
Laura helpfully snips a lock of Phil’s hair at the funeral and feeds it to Ollie, who then manifests as the ghost.
But more specifically Psychoanalytic from my perspective, I’m training as a Modern, and so oriented towards/from the pre-Oedipal, which is to say Mommy. The so-called narcissistic neuroses are defined by their resistance to maturation, the curdled inward turning of aggression upon the self. Laura calls herself a counselor but is kind of a Kleinian, putting her faith in the anger of the baby (after she puts the anger, the Angel, into the baby). And pre-Oedipal, narcissistic neuroses, the formerly supposedly untreatably regressed mental states which were thought (pre-Spotnitz) to be impossible to access via psychoanalysis, are not infrequently referred to as Oral.
And so what to make of the ending? Is it that Laura does mature and grow? That the scene / ritual does not work? It certainly seems like it’s about to. It’s that she goes crazy, and gives up. Fails. The thing she’s trying to do doesn’t happen. Or does it? The survivors are, obviously, scarred for life. It’s unclear exactly if Laura is dying or not in the final scene, seeming as she does to reopen the wound on her arm and to “join” Cathy. She got what she wanted, though in one narratively impotent sense. The vessel Oliver / Connor even seems to come around in the final moments, acknowledging his former self as he calls out for help to the authorities. But no one survives intact. No one survives grief, death, or loss. Everyone is scarred, challenged and changed by their emotions.
I’ll end by sharing my second favorite cover version of Gentry’s “Ode” (Nath Ann’s isn’t online yet, not that I know of). This upbeat disco bop is courtesy of a group called Sweet Potato Pie, who I know nothing else about:
Bring Her Back is now available to watch at home.
NOTES:
- Hyman Spotnitz: Founder of Modern Psychoanalysis
“Spotnitz's theory of technique focuses on specific interventions aimed at resolving preoedipal resistances—also known as resistances to maturation.”
- The VHS ritual tape Laura watches kept reminding me of another of our generation’s immortal, resurrected and undead mother monster figures:
- Edwards, J. (2010). Teaching and learning about psychoanalysis: Film as a teaching tool, with reference to a particular film, Morvern Callar. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 26(1), 80-99.
- Berman, E. (1998). The film viewer: From dreamer to dream interpreter. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 18(2), 193-206.
- I kept thinking about Katy Perry before I saw the movie. Something about this movie, the title and vague concept of grief driving someone psychotic makes me think of her. Look, her stock has never been cheaper than it is right now. When was the last time you sat down and listened to the music of Katy Perry? I don’t want to think about her or listen to her but there’s something so gratifyingly abject about her in this moment, returned from the frigid vacuum of outer space back home to an indifferent planet. They certainly brought her back. Can’t somebody take her to a gay club? What about that party where you have to bring a woman to get in, so that it won’t just be another party about gay men? What if someone showed up and said “Yeah, I brought a woman – Katy Perry”
Who will resurrect her? Do we need to sacrifice a child to bring her (career) back? She’s already killed a nun.
- The penultimate form of Oliver definitely reminds me of my running selfie practice. Marathon training is going great, thanks for asking. See you in Berlin in September and yes I want a cigarette.
- Desperate for the Official Merch to be restocked. This is what I want for my birthday (8/7).
- For those curious, you can purchase the Tari tape and lots of other spooky shit online.
