Screening: The Grey Areas

Screening of Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die raises interesting questions.

LAHORE:

“We’re always trying fit into the role that society has carved out for us,”says The South Asian Free Media Association’s (Safma) Maryam Zulfiqar Khan, referring to the stresses of life. In the backdrop of fast-paced life and modern thinking, Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho remains one of the most quotable personalities.

Around 40 people showed up at the Safma auditorium for the screening of a Coelho adaptation Veronika Decides to Die. The film revolves around the young and pretty Veronika (played by Sarah Michelle Geller), who takes sleeping tablets one after the other and slips into unconsciousness. She later wakes in a mental asylum in Slovenia, where she learns that she has suffered irreparable damage and has only a few days to live. While at the hospital, Veronika encounters some mental patients and learns that the conceptual framework of insanity, as preached in society, is questionable. She learns these people are only ‘insane’ because they refuse to follow the society’s rules. The journey through the hospital helps her understand the meaning of life and what it means to be content.

The discussion on the film provoked widespread feedback and healthy debate. Exploring the film’s significance, the audience looked at it as a critique of modern psychologically, that sees everything in black and white, categorising people as ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ according to set definitions of the words.

Meanwhile, Safma President Imtiaz Alam explained that psychiatry in the Pakistan was thoroughly stigmatised. The local psychologists and psychiatrists are not typically regarded as modern day scientists, hence many mentally disturbed people are being treated in other alarming ways; for instance people prefer going to apparent ‘pirs’ and quacks.

“The film also provides a critical reflection on the concept of what is normal and abnormal psychology by critiquing the methods that are typically used,” said. Alam.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2011.