Encountering "the real" in the films of Roberto Rossellini

I don't know about you, but reading dense academic articles about foreign films is my idea of a good time. In the article “Encounters in the real: subjectivity and its excess in Roberto Rossellini,” film and psychoanalytical expert Fabio Vighi takes a look at the films of famous Italian director Roberto Rossellini. We've watched two Rossellini films so far (Rome, Open City and Germany, Year Zero), and the article mentions both of them. Vighi takes a psychoanalytical approach to viewing the films, drawing heavily on the work of 20^th century psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

I have to admit that this article was incredibly hard to understand. The author wrote in an impenetrable academic style that made my eyes gloss over on more than one occasion. From what I gather, Vighi's main premise was that Rossellini's films, especially Rome, Open City and Paisà, are best viewed through a psychoanalytic lens. The main characters in the films “encounter the real” in tragic ways that allow them to overcome their subjective limitations and die heroically...or something like that.

The article dealt a lot with the term jouissance, which comes from the magical realm of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Since it was used about a hundred times, I decided I should look up what the term meant so I could feel slightly better about myself. Turns out the term is synonymous with pleasure or enjoyment. The author of the article was basically arguing that the characters came to terms with their desire in each of Rossellini's films. The author also pointed out the sexual tension that existed between male and female characters and how Rossellini depicts the impossibility of communication between the sexes. I found this section of the article to be the easiest to understand, primarily because it dealt with some ideas I've already been exposed.

Overall, this article provided a lot of insight into the sheer depth and complexity of film criticism. It also made me feel incredibly dumb. It's amazing to know that academics who seriously study film have intense conversations full of polysyllabic words about aspects of films that I never even think about. So next time you watch one of Rossellini's films, apparently you should have a psychology textbook and a graduate degree in psychoanalytic theory with you, just to be on the safe side.