Anything Imaginable Now Possible

CEBU, Philippines - Whereas older movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945) — with Salvador Dali’s surreal dream sequence — dealt with psychoanalysis, or “The Manchurian Candidate” (1965) dealt with mind control, current films are more inclined to physically represent the mind’s inner terrain.

This is partly because of advances in digital effects, which have made it possible to create nearly anything imaginable. But this cinematic trend also dovetails recent developments in psychiatry.

In recent years, scientists have increasingly pinpointed how the mind works using technologies for brain imaging and brain mapping that can localize brain activity.

“Now in psychology we’re using a lot more neuroimaging devices, such as PET scans, CAT scans, MRIs,” says Dr. Sharon Packer, psychiatrist and author of “Movies and the Modern Psyche,” a 2007 book that looks at the connection between psychology and film.

“Psychiatry is now thinking in terms of visions, if we look at neuroimaging. Psychiatry is getting much more visual, so I think that plays into a different kind of film.”

And so filmmakers, too, have mapped the brain.

Moviegoing Akin To Waking Dreams

In 2004’s “Eternal Sunshine,” Jim Carrey stumbles through his memories while they’re being erased: rain falls indoors; a bed is suddenly transported to a beach; a tiny Carrey is washed by his mother in the sink.

And in “The Matrix” (1999), which influenced Nolan, Neo (Keanu Reeves) spends most of the film plugged into a separate world, his eyes closed and body strapped down while he crusades in another reality.

The experience of moviegoing has long been said to be similar to a waking dream, and many of the most beloved films (“Wizard of Oz,” “Vertigo,” “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”) are positively dreamlike.

But in contemporary movies, outside views of the psyche often aren’t enough. Perhaps filmmakers, reacting to developments in science, feel that they know much better what the mind looks like.

“Because I pay attention to (dreams), I become more attuned to them and I become more sensitive,” Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine,” “The Science of Sleep”) once said. “It’s a good way to see filmmaking, associating disparate images.”

Many of these films are among the most complex of recent mainstream movies, with nonlinear plots and elaborate systems of reality. Often, these journeys into the mind are less likely to unlock a simple secret or memory, but reveal an unknowable, mysterious labyrinth. And those who think they have the mind figured out usually get their comeuppance.

The 2000 film “The Cell” was written by Mark Protosevich and starred Jennifer Lopez as a psychotherapist who literally goes inside the nightmarish mind of a serial killer to search for clues for his latest victim. Inspired in part by “Brainscan” (1994) and “Dreamscape” (1984), it was ornately and lavishly directed by Tarsem Singh.