Test 2

MOTHER – SEPARATION AND INDIVIDUATION

Elsewhere, I have claimed that the giant bean bags in the shape of breasts on the bed behind the couple, to the left of frame, could be seen to symbolise Jessie as the Good Mother, or GOOD BREAST, a term used by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

Likewise, I have suggested that their pose is rather like that of a mother and child, and resembles those depicted by artists such as Bellini or Michaelangelo (Pieta).

Donald Winnicott, also an early childhood development analyst, might have described this scene featuring Jessie’s loving attentions and embrace, as a perfect image of what he called the ‘GOOD ENOUGH mother’.

Jessie can be seen here providing a safe and  supportive, nurturing,  or “holding environment”, as Winnicott calls it, quite literally “holding”  in the case before us.

Margaret Mahler, yet another theorist, has written that a critical element of the infant’s development is the need to break away, to separate from the child’s symbiotic bond with the mother’s breast, to begin its life as an independent being, 

a phase Mahler calls ‘’separation and individuation’.

In another scene,  I think the desire to liberate himself from the mother may be evidenced in the toddler’s escape from his pusher.

We could interpret Max’s desire to break away in his HAND movement at this point ………. as he shrugs off Jessie’s embrace.  Its a dreadful precursor to the throttle gesture on the motor bike that will eventually  claim Jessie’s life.

THE MONSTROUS MASK

Jessie looks unhappy the next morning when Max claims he’s leaving her to go to work.

James Masterson writes that the mother’s capacity to mirror, by way of acknowledging and responding to the infant’s emerging self, is essential in the development of the infant.

But here, with Max sitting up on the bench, just as the baby did the night before, it looks like Max is being a mirror to Jessie with his monstrous mask.  

So, it’s possible to read this as Max reflecting Jessie’s monstrosity….. the monstrous in her that would trap him, consume him, and prevent him from escaping into the outside world and developing as an independent individual.

Then again, we should remember that the night before, apparently rather approvingly,  Jessie has already described their little son as taking after his father, Max,  as “a monster”.

And at the end of that scene, we see what seems to be a composite shot that mirrors Jessie and Max on the left side of the frame, with a monstrous black bear on the right, alongside the image on the television screen of another monster, the guy who threatened to run  down the child in the middle of the road, the Nightrider.

In fact, positioned as she is to the left of Max, the growling black bear takes Jessie’s place, so that Max becomes further aligned with the Nightrider.

We have already seen Max being mirrored by the Nightrider in a previous scene in the film, where Max may be interpreted as be looking into the rear vision mirror of his car as he listens to the Nightrider is providing a character analysis of himself.

But he is also describing the person Max will become as the film proceeds.

In fact Nightrider describes himself as a “rocker and a roller” suggesting similarities with Max’s name…. Rockatansky.

So the Nightrider may be thought of as an alter-ego to Max.

In a  way, Jessie seems to be endorsing or mirroring Max, and  their son Jessie, as her own little monsters.

Perhaps both things are true….. each of them can be monstrous to the other.

Its a difficult balance for any mother who wishes to cherish and hold onto her developing infant and, at the same time, give them a bit of a push into the outside world.

So, by mirroring him in his mask, perhaps Jessie is signalling to Max that he is different to her, that they are not one and the same person at all, and she is prompting him to go off and find himself.

And, by Max pretending that Jessie is the grumpy monster who wants him to leave,  

a sort of an unspoken, “OK, if that’s what you want’, he allows himself to escape her clutches (so to speak) .

But, before he leaves, and by way of further encouraging him in his journey towards independence, with a gesture of her understanding, Jessie signals her love.  

From down below Max looks up to her, as if she is a giant 50 foot woman, and he is a li ttle child, apparently even pre-verbal as she signs, that she is “crazy” about him.

But later, of course it is Max who will go mad, like the Nightrider, becoming a monster, a terminal crazy (as he himself predicted), “a fuel injected suicide machine.”