Movies You Can't Watch Because The Hit Too Close To Home?

[SweetPeaandSunBird]

This is a bit wacky but one way I "defended" myself against my family was by making them uncomfortable to enter my room. I was a Led Zeppelin kid and read things about the occult. Dripping candles in my room, etc. (I certainly did not condone or agree with satanism, but I intentionally left some books in my room about it and Charles Manson, etc. so that my brother would tell on me. It freaked my overly fundamentalist family out. Voilá...my brother and father rarely came back to my room ever again.)

Why did I mention all that: I love watching Supernatural and Grimm, etc. Oh, and, Buffy! Ha-ha!!!

One of my "ego-states" loves those shows. I call her "Raven." (I loved Poe.) She corresponds to that time period that I mentioned above.

Rave-on!;)

 

[SweetPeaandSunBird]

The Accused. I saw it at a theater not long after a stranger assault. I've been trying to view it again so I can piece it together with that time in my life, but I haven't found the courage yet to do so. El Salvador (I think that's the title -- with James Woods), too.

 

[p-no]

I've become almost obsessed with watching films and TV programmes about war and search and rescue

I used to do the same. I think, it was my personal way of getting out, of beginning to. At a certain stage, they started to overwhelm me (movies of SA, rape, lost children, abducted children, etc.). Then I stopped watching them and made myself (sheer force) turn them off. After a few years of doing that and really not watching many and not even whole movies anymore, my soul seems to have been ready to admit that I had been watching them (and crying, screaming etc. while watching and after with me not knowing why at all) for a reason. Some time, my memories of my SA came back and I was finally ready to start to pull myself out and not only through. But I had really needed that break from those oh-so-well-known stories in order for the real memories to reappear. I needed some peace in order to be able to face hell.

 

[p-no]

I can not (and I mean can not, there is no way) watch movies that show a violent scene involving a child and plays music that usually soothes children (some classical bedtime music, for example). When the pictures don't match the music, I freeze and get terrified in a split second.

 

[Hashi]

Clockwork Orange

It took me weeks to get over seeing a scene from this. I think it's a truly vile movie.

Just seeing a picture of the Joker in the Dark Knight was a really bad experience, too.

 

[SweetPeaandSunBird]

I'm with you on Clockwork Orange as far as not being able to watch it. (I do like some of the experimental elements in it, but not enough to watch it.)

I feel the same about Blue Velvet.

 

[Privateer]

Clockwork Orange.

Hmm. I can and did sit through that film, but I'd rather not do it again, for the same reason that I'll never watch No Country For Old Men. I don't like random acts of violence against people who've done nothing wrong.

That was why I joined the Army, to put myself between normal people and people who do stuff like that.

I think that's maybe why my sister joined the police, too.

 

[Crimson]

I always watch Law and Order Special Victims when it is on TV when I'm alone. This is after I have drank, at those times I think I feel safe being angry and hurt.
I don't remember the movies I can't watch, they just disappear into the ether. I think this is an extension of my 'forgetting' coping mechanism, I dream of a day when I'm better equipped.

 

[SweetPeaandSunBird]

Wow! It's really interesting what you say about No Country for Old Men... I feel a tad guilty now for saying it, but I really like that film. So, I'm thinking, well...why? I'm thinking now for two reasons why am strangely "attracted" by the film.

1.
95% of the traumas that I have experienced took place in Texas (the setting of the film), but my family moved away from there when I was 15. About 2 yrs later I abruptly (radically) changed my "persona" into the perfect daughter as if I would/could be the only one in the family to make it work, to magically wipe away the dysfunction. In doing so, I over-generalized a hatred for everything in Texas (save for Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughn, ad infinitum and Tex-Mex cuisine.) So until the assault in my upper 20s, I forgot the things that I did actually like about Texas -- the vernacular, the sunsets, etc.

2.
My father seemed so unreadable (in his spirit, I mean). All I could read were the few gestures in his face. Everything about him seemed an empty entity. He never talks about his childhood, never; I only have a few snippets that some relatives accidentally leaked out. I guess Javier Bardem's character is a stand-in for the father I keep trying to figure out. So, I guess it's a safe way to study what seems to be the absence of spirit in my father.

Thanks again for starting this discussion! Movies and self-reflection -- what a great vehicle for processing things.

 

[Privateer]

No need to feel guilty! I hear it's a very good film in its own right and if it has meaning for you, fair play.

As I say, though, I have problems of my own with random and unjust violence that would make it a very hard film for me to watch. I just can't stand that sort of thing. I've lost a couple of teeth, most of my sense of smell and nearly a lot more than that because of my 'issues', but I still haven't learned. :blackeye:

Ok, why do I keep volunteering so much completely irrelevent information about myself and hijacking threads? Answers on a postcard to...um...me.

 

[SweetPeaandSunBird]

I don't remember the movies I can't watch, they just disappear into the ether. I think this is an extension of my 'forgetting' coping mechanism, I dream of a day when I'm better equipped.

My boyfriend has helped me a lot in terms of building up my threshold. But, it's taken a slow incremental process of 9+ years to build it up to where it is now. I'm not so interested in the threshold per se, but it's nice to watch films I always had an interest in but avoided due to them possibly triggering a flashback. Most of this is still relegated to home viewings, however. I reserve cinema viewings for comedies or courtroom dramas.

That ol' "forgetting coping mechanism" is a tough nut to crack, however. I'm not there yet either.:O_o:

 

[Mcll]

I'm pretty good with this because I can appreciate film as art but "Irreversible" really bothered me.