"Identity"

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

I just watched the movie "Identity". Don't read further if you want to watch the movie without it being spoiled. And then tell me what you think about it.


It is about a guy with MPD who does not know he has multiple personalities, and one of his personalities is a little 5 year old kid who is an angry serial killer. Would that even be possible?
I don't know why but when i watch movies, i always have that weird feeling in my spine when I understand all the movie (you know, when you don't get what's happening at all and then there's THE one sentence and everything becomes clear?). In this movie, it is when the guy with MPD is in front of all those people who are talking to him about that serial killer who has MPD, and he's like, "why are you telling me all this?" and they say, "because you are one of his personalities".
Also i cried when the guy switches, and when he hears the voice of one of his personalities in his head. I don't know why i get so sensitive about movies.
If any of you saw it, what is your opinion?

Comments

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

yeah I saw that one.. my S.O. in the physical tried to subtly keep me from seeing it because he thought it might be too upsetting for us.. but we saw it anyway... it was a little upsetting only in the way that it's like a horror movie for Multiples--a sort of 'what if' kind of movie.... at the same time, it's another one of those movies that give Multiples a bad name in the media..... I wouldn't have minded it so much if people out there knew that this wasn't how Multiples are (at least the functional ones).. but people more than likely accept this as a kind of truth and think that if anyone claims to have other people sharing their body then they have a psychotic killer in their too..

one thing we did like about that movie was the fact that there was an "inner world"... sure it was only one location, but we liked it all the same... overall, the movie was so-so... *shrugs*

Kas & a couple

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

i didn't think people would actually think that about multiples after seeing the movie...i think most people would actually get interested in MPD by seeing it, and in a good way

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure... I think if a group of random people were all asked to share their thoughts and opinions on what a "Multiple" (or MPD, to the public) is, the majority probably (I'm not positive) say that "a Multiple is a person with alters who help them deal with abuse they suffered as a child.. there is a child, an angry one, a mother, a protector, (etc, etc).. and the only way this person can be healed is for all the alters to return together into one person.."

or something like that..... I think the main public view is that these "alters" are all pieces of one person and that one isn't truly well unless they are all back together...

Kasia

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

that's also what's taught in psychology classes...what would you say is the main goal of therapy for someone who has MPD if it's not being 1?

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

well, I guess it depends on the individual and how they see themselves.. if they feel they fit the "MPD" model and feel it's not a healthy way to be, then becoming one person might be what's right for them..

but our group doesn't see it that way.. we each see ourselves as separate people and not pieces of one person.. so "becoming one" wouldn't work for us.. not that we only want one of us to remain here anyway.. it'd get pretty quiet and lonely! *grin* ^_^

Kasia

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Even at the height of the acceptance by doctors of MPD and treatment of same, many doctors did not necessarily set the goal of therapy at integration or becoming one, but simply getting along -- they did what they called "family therapy". Truddi Chase wasn't the first we'd ever heard of to refuse integration, Nancy Ross (http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/sdunion.html) of Redondo Beach was in 1984. We have gotten occasional notes mostly from clergy counselors who instead of thinking of it either as possession or a tragedy just try to get everyone talking to each other and let it go at that.

Remember, some of the old therapists used to think that communication was integration. If that's what they want to think, that's fine with us.

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

I saw that movie... I thought it was kind of too bluntly obvious, they pretty much tell you right away that the guy has multiple personalities. It really kind of feeds the negative image that multiples are like, hidden serial killers... but hey, it's a horror movie, what do you expect. I probably would have liked it more if it wasn't for the ending. =\

has anyone experienced integration like that? like a serial killing? kind of questionable ethically that the people defending the guy were like... yeah, it'll all be perfectly alright once they've killed each other off.

did like the inner world concept, though, I thought perhaps the best part of the movie is where one of the personalities is switching back and forth.

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

i really liked the switching part too^^

[pengke.livejournal.com]

We did a review of it back when we saw it: http://www.livejournal.com/users/pengke/17367.html

It was a bad movie and the things in it that were good were negated by the cliche ending.

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it and I'm glad. From what I've heard it's a bad movie, with a bad premise, it's yet another pile of wank about multiples killing themselves off, or better yet, other people.


In *theory* it would be possible. In reality? Heh, uh, no. If it happens it's not common.

[squnq.livejournal.com]

I didn't find it so bad. Negative reinforcement of stereotypes, but that's par for the course with movies. Some of the concepts mirror my experiences in "killing" one of our self-destructive peers long ago, so I am able to relate, but I cannot imagine "picking them off one by one" in such a manner if we were to integrate.

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

how did you "kill" him/her?

[whispersong.livejournal.com]

some of us liked it, some of us did not. It bothered one of our people, a protector, because soemthing similar did happen here once or twice.

{J}tatiana

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

how so?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

pengke's review is also here:

http://www.karitas.net/pavilion/library/articles/m_review_identity1103.html

much more at
Pavilion's Media Reviews (http://www.karitas.net/pavilion/library/library_media.html)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about getting sensitive at movies. When they took the scapegoated soldiers out to shoot them in Paths of Glory (http://www.filmsite.org/path.html), Gabe and I cried like babies.

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

hehe...yeah, i guess everybody has their own stuff that makes them cry...
i cried because i really *felt* how it would feel to discover you have MPD...it's even scary that i thought it'd be

[pengke.livejournal.com]

See that's exactly the problem with the movie. Being multiple is not horrifying. It can be scary for some people to find out but it can also be enlightening, reassuring, wonderful, and all sorts of positive things. We don't wake up one day and learn that our entire life has been a lie. We just find that things are a bit more complicated than we thought or we find that things are less complicated because all of a sudden the stuff that was confusing and chaotic now makes sense.

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

i don't deny that there are positive aspects to multiplicity, but what if you didn't know you had multiple personalities for a long time? wouldn't that be scary? just the thought that you didn't know...

[pengke.livejournal.com]

No, it wasn't scary. I felt a bit silly because I should have known earlier. Mostly I was just happy and relieved because now I knew what the great giant thing that had always been missing from my life was and it wasn't missing anymore. It was headache and anxiety inducing going back over my memories trying to figure out which things were really me but I got over it. Now I know it doesn't matter because even if something originally happened to someone else the memories influenced my life and are a part of me just the same as if they'd originally been mine.

Courtney wasn't scared about being multiple either. She was upset that everything changed in the ten or so years she'd been asleep but anyone would be. Sharing things with the rest of us wasn't a big deal.

- Alanna

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I was relieved and proud of my people. I cried because I was so happy and because I'd been unfair to them for too long trying to squosh them as "imaginary characters I should be old enough to grow out of".

Believe me, I was a lot more scared when I thought it wasn't multiplicity and that they weren't people.

[shatterstorm.livejournal.com]

It wasn't scary in and of itself. What was scary to our front was the idea that we weren't communicating. When things happen and you've no memory of them, or when you find youself standing in front of the phone at four in the morning talking to a child in your head who wants to call someone, that's scary. Part of realizing that you're a multiple is realizing that, well, you've been one for awhile. *grin*

We do wish we'd been in a position in life earlier to sort this all out - we're much happier now.

[ninalyn.livejournal.com]

Overall we thought it was an incredibly stupid movie (negative portrayal of multiples as serial killers yet again, sigh. Cliche' ending, etc). We think its one saving grace was the otherworld aspect of it. Or inner world. Or whatever you want to call it.

I don't know. Overall, it was interesting. And who's to say that our experience of multiplicity is the only right one, we suppose. It just seems a bit sensationalized, killing "alters" and all. Meh.

-MIMICS

[prettyrazor.livejournal.com]

That's what we liked about it... The inner world thing. Because most films just *don't* portray that, and most multiples have it to some extent. (Ours is complicated, but we're a very large system.) So we liked that... And Clea DuVall... We love most of her movies.

-Anita, of The People

[prettyrazor.livejournal.com]

I liked it, actually, although a few of the insiders here wondered if it was a subtle way to say, "integration is the answer..." Since he kills all of his personalities. I thought it was pretty cool as a movie, and although not the most realistic portrayal of DID, it was better than some of the others we've seen. I think that, scary as it is, the plot of that film could actually happen.

-Anita, of The People
(The horror movie queen of the system... I am addicted to scary movies.)

[pengke.livejournal.com]

The plot of the film could never happen. How would someone committ murder, go through the trial, and spend years on deathrow without anyone else in the system noticing anything? Maybe the person could commit a crime and keep it a secret but there's no way the rest of it would happen. You wouldn't find an entire system that was clueless about the fact that they're multiple either.

[prettyrazor.livejournal.com]

anita wasn't saying it was believable entirely, but it is possible for someone to be a serial killer without their system knowing. some systems are not coconscious. ours is, thankfully, but not all are. and it's possible the system wouldn't know... they were all in their inner world. none of them knew what was going on outside. maybe that was how someone kept them safe... keep them in this place in their head, so that there was no awareness of the surface because being on death row was too traumatic. i don't think it's entirely impossible. unlikely? definitely. but one thing we've learned with multiples is that you can't really say anything is completely impossible because every system is different and unique. who's to say that no one's system works like that?

-melinda, of the people