Movie Healing Theme Topics

Inspiration

• Overcoming challenges
• Following the call
• Gaining hope and encouragement
• Laughter works as medicine
• Personal courage
• Role models
• Searching for meaning
• Spirituality
• Support groups
• Transformation and renewal
• Uplifting/Feel Good

Personal Questions

• Abandonment
• Abuse: Children
• Abuse: Emotional and physical
• Afterlife
• Aging
• Anger and forgiveness
• Bereavement (loss and grief)
• Choosing a life partner
• Codependency
• Crying for emotional catharsis
• Death and dying
• Denial
• Developing inner resources
• Food
• Friends
• Homosexuality: male
• Homosexuality: female
• Isolation
• Legal issues
• Life Stage Transitions
• Men's Issues
• Personal goals and values
• Philosophical questions
• Single adults
• Stress
• Stuttering
• Vocation/Career/Success
• Women's Issues

Social Questions

• Bureaucracy
• Community
• Diversity (Race/Gender/Sexual Orientation/Culture)
• Ethics
• Teamwork

Children

• Childhood fears
• Fantasies and fears
• Friends, bullies and social life
• Gifted children

Adolescents

• Peer relationships
• Search for identity
• Transition to adulthood

Families

• General
• Adoption/Custody/After Divorce
• Blended Families/Step-Parenting
• Family conflict
• Incest
• Letting go
• Parent-Child/Mentor-Pupil Relationships
• Sibling relationships
• Single parents

Couples

• Affairs
• Choosing a life partner
• Commitment
• Communication
• Conflict and negotiation
• Divorce
• Nontraditional relationships
• Renewed intimacy
• Romantic Love
• Sex/Sexuality
• Spousal abuse
• Widowhood

Addiction

• Alcohol
• Drugs
• Gambling
• Sexual
• Multiple Substances

Behavioral Health

• Bipolar disorder
• Conduct disorders
• Conversion Behavior
• Borderline traits
• Dependent traits
• Dependent personality disorder
• Dissociative disorders
• Mania
• Obsessive-Compulsive
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
• Mental Institutions
• Rehabilitation
• Suicide

Physical Illness/Medical Issues

• General
• Aids
• Blindness
• Cancer
• Deafness
• Disabilities
• Disfigurement
• Dwarfism
• Limb and spinal
• Polio and post polio
• Severe illness
• Traumatic brain injury

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)



 Rated PG:13  1 hr. 53 minutes

Director: Audrey Wells

Producers: Tom Sternberg, Audrey Wells

Screenwriter: Audrey Wells

Cast: Diane Lane, Raoul Bova, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan, Dan Bucatinsky, Vincent Riotta

Films that display the virtue transcendence provide avenues for meaning in life, empower viewers to enhance their awareness, create healthy life changes, deepen their commitment with others, or help connect them more deeply with "something greater." (Niemiec & Wedding, 2008).  The virtue transcendence is shown by the protagonist of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun.  This character develops the strengths appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude and hope.

Frances Mayes is a San Francisco author and book critic who suffers intense emotional pain in the process of divorcing her husband.  Frances' facial expressions and body language of despair pull the viewer into her internal emotional experience.  Her lesbian best friend gives Frances a 10-day trip on a gay tour through the beautiful landscape of Tuscany.

The viewers sense her appreciation of beauty when she buys a 300-year old house in Tuscany.  Viewers share her fear and dread and many other challenges she confronts while remodeling her villa.  Frances says that she "is just tired of being afraid."

Rebuilding the mansion gives her hope.  This process corresponds symbolically with the process of reassembling the fragmented pieces of her soul.  As her inner healing progresses, she feels grateful and falls in love.  The messages this story conveys are hopeful. Her life becomes complete again. (Wolz, 2013, P. 68).









References & Resources

Solomon, Gary (2001). Reel Therapy: How Movies Inspire You to Overcome Life's Problems. NY: Lebhar-Friedman Books.

Wedding, Danny, M. Boyd, Mary Ann & Niemiec, Ryan M. (2005). Movies and Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology (2nd revised and edited edition). Ashland, OH: Hogrefe & Huber.

Wolz, Birgit (2013). Positive Psychology & The Movies: Transformational Effects of Movies through Positive Cinema Therapy. Zur Institute. Innovative Resources & Online Continuing Education.