she remembers that she cried when she saw this film a few
years ago. As she watches the sad scenes, tears start flowing. It
feels really good to cry, and her mood lifts a little. Things do
not look as bleak anymore. The thought occurs to her that there
might be a light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time she
started accepting that her marriage might be over soon and that
she might be happy again after a period of grieving.
Hal has a very hard time making a decision. He has
received two job offers and is going back and forth, favoring
one, then the other. He even writes down all the pluses and
minuses of each. Neither job seems to stand out as an obvious
choice. He feels kind of paralyzed, tense. His head starts hurt-
ing. Hal knows that he cannot make a decision from this tense
inner place. He struggles for hours until his friend Mark hap-
pens to come over. Mark has brought a video to watch together:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973).
After they watch the film, Hal feels somehow lighter and
inspired. It is as if something in his consciousness has shifted
away from his usual concentrated thinking mode. His tense,
arduous mentality changes into an open-minded, relaxed atti-
tude. When the two friends start talking about the pros and
cons of Hal’s job offers, he suddenly knows intuitively from
deep inside, which of the jobs is best for him.
Sallyfeels confused and worried. Last night she became
very angry with her boyfriend Jim and yelled at him. This led
to a big fight. Now she feels bad because she sees that the small
mistake he made when they cooked dinner together did not jus-
tify her acting out that way. The real reason for her reaction
was her hurt about his plans to leave the next morning for a
two-week fishing trip with friends. This made her feel excluded
and abandoned.
Sally intuitively senses that it would help both of them if she
apologized, but she is afraid this would make her look stupid
and needy. It could make her feel too vulnerable and weak. She
How Movies Support Healing and Transformation 21