A Safe Place is the first film I've ever seen that understands how a disordered mind functions-or doesn't function, if you will. Other art films dabble in this sort of free-association, but they often do it in a parodic sort of way that-though often very funny-cheapens the effect. In this film, Jaglom takes seriously what it must be like to live inside the head of a person that few in the world will understand. Take for example the recurring scene where Jack Nicholson is talking to Tuesday Weld on her roof, and the way they are circling around each other. We in the audience become dizzy and disoriented, and we get a feel for how Nicholson is manipulating her, and this is conveyed visually while they are discussing something irrelevant to the point of the scene. It's a masterful piece of film. There are times in the movie when we're not sure what we're seeing or hearing, but that's the point-Jaglom thinks well enough of his audience to expect them to meet him halfway and bring our own interpretations to the grey areas of his story. Unfortunately, most audiences refuse to do so, and as a result they don't understand.
Those of us that do understand this movie-myself, for instance-fall in love with it because he captured a slice of our unique brain weather. For others, if they have the patience to try to see the world through somebody else's eyes, they get a glimpse of what it is like to be neurodivergent. Still others will just find it pretentious and will leave the film unimpressed because they fail to see what Jaglom accomplished with this film.
The bottom line is, a movie like this isn't going to be a hit because large numbers of audience members don't go to movies for insight. It's as simple as that. They go to movies to forget about their problems, not to better understand themselves or-heaven forbid!-those around them.
This movie also shows something that I wish was spoken about in the film critique world more-that movies are made in the editing room. I have a very hard time picturing A Safe Place as a script that would've caught the attention of any potential backers because its charm, sensitivity and strengths are in the way the movie is put together on film, not on the page. On the page you just have random dialogue and imagery that even the most visual-minded reader will fail to picture the way Jaglom intended. That's why scripts are so misleading with many of the best films.
To finish on a personal note, I was an amateur filmmaker myself throughout high school, and I made a short film about a disordered mind that was filmed largely through improv and, again, really made in the editing room. When it was shown at a student film festival, the judges praised how it was put together but said they failed to understand it. It made me step back and think "Gee, maybe I should've made the movie more accessible. Maybe nobody else in the world thinks enough like me to understand what I was trying to say." And then, fifteen years later, I saw A Safe Place apply many of the same techniques-which I didn't know anybody else had ever thought up!-and Jaglom, too, was told that his film wasn't accessible enough. All I know is, I understood it perfectly as a snapshot inside the mind of a person few people had-or will ever have-the patience to understand. People like I was as a teenager, indeed, people like I still am. And those people will eat up this movie.
Those of us that do understand this movie-myself, for instance-fall in love with it because he captured a slice of our unique brain weather. For others, if they have the patience to try to see the world through somebody else's eyes, they get a glimpse of what it is like to be neurodivergent. Still others will just find it pretentious and will leave the film unimpressed because they fail to see what Jaglom accomplished with this film.
The bottom line is, a movie like this isn't going to be a hit because large numbers of audience members don't go to movies for insight. It's as simple as that. They go to movies to forget about their problems, not to better understand themselves or-heaven forbid!-those around them.
This movie also shows something that I wish was spoken about in the film critique world more-that movies are made in the editing room. I have a very hard time picturing A Safe Place as a script that would've caught the attention of any potential backers because its charm, sensitivity and strengths are in the way the movie is put together on film, not on the page. On the page you just have random dialogue and imagery that even the most visual-minded reader will fail to picture the way Jaglom intended. That's why scripts are so misleading with many of the best films.
To finish on a personal note, I was an amateur filmmaker myself throughout high school, and I made a short film about a disordered mind that was filmed largely through improv and, again, really made in the editing room. When it was shown at a student film festival, the judges praised how it was put together but said they failed to understand it. It made me step back and think "Gee, maybe I should've made the movie more accessible. Maybe nobody else in the world thinks enough like me to understand what I was trying to say." And then, fifteen years later, I saw A Safe Place apply many of the same techniques-which I didn't know anybody else had ever thought up!-and Jaglom, too, was told that his film wasn't accessible enough. All I know is, I understood it perfectly as a snapshot inside the mind of a person few people had-or will ever have-the patience to understand. People like I was as a teenager, indeed, people like I still am. And those people will eat up this movie.