Freud versus  Lewis

Freud's Last Session

Ireland, UK, USA

Director: Matt Brown

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour.

Freud versus Lewis: on God, love, sex and the meaning of life.

As the Freud used to say, we're driven by two things: wanting to become great and sexual attraction. Now, the world is imperfect. But thanks to Freud, it seems that all life's troubles can be traced back to sex.

Another Tuesday in a noisy pub, «The Eagle and Child», on St Giles Boulevard in Oxford, John Tolkien and Clive Lewis, members of the Literary Club, comfortably ensconced in armchairs and smoking pipes, were discussing ... no,  not Middle-earth or Narnia.

The subject of their polemical discussion was a recent theological novel by Lewis - "The Pilgrim's Regress" - in which, through a character called Sigismund, he lampoons a famous atheist psychoanalyst.

Meanwhile, in his luxurious mansion in the centre of Hampstead, Professor Freud, hurt by the literary teaser's insolence and blasphemy, was plotting an elaborate vengeance - to challenge him to a theological duel and crush him through the power of persuasive argument.

So, on a gloomy September morning in 1939, as the whole of Britain sat glued to the loudspeakers awaiting the King's speech, the humble Professor Clive Lewis travelled to London to meet the great Sigmund Freud.

No one knows for sure whether this meeting actually took place or not. What is known is that, at a time when the world was in a state of panic and Europe was in the throes of war, the famous psychoanalyst met a certain Oxford professor of literature in a respectable part of London to engage in a psychological-intellectual duel over the questions of the universe.

What has sex got to do with it, you may ask? And you will find out, along with God, love and the meaning of life, from the film itself.

And remember, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

Original Language: English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pswQLfmhSbw