Jimmy P.

source: Jimmy P.

A favorite actor for his intensity, how America treated American Indian veterans, an invitation to a psycho-historical true story - Wow! I'm hooked. Unfortunately, I was not convinced by any of it. It's no 21 Grams, Sicario, or even Wolfman.

watched it cause it was on TV and I was browsing around and just wanted to see what Benicio was up to. I knew the French guy as well cause I'm being a girl like that so I figured its some sort of indie movie going on. It was nothing glorious about his injury and if you didn't deal with existential angst and having to be honest with yourself and face the mistakes you made ... and the situations that tormented you in the back of your mind there's no point in watching it. Nobodys perfect and there's no way in hell that hes going to make some majestic awesome magical choices that's going to blow your mind :)) and the end is not all happy superlucky cause lifes not like that. you just go on living and have more pain inflicted upon you and find ways to cope with it like watching way too much TV or alcohol and so on..

It's one of those movies that you have to sit down and watch; you cannot go and cook some spaghetti while you're watching it, you have to pay attention. You can feel a rise in the film's soul as you watch it display fine cinematography, good performances and almost perfect pacing. The film runs at an exact length, never feeling too long or too short altogether, and the scenes run through as one scene, as how most movies should be. The dream sequences in this film are my favourite, them being surreal beings with meaning the main character attempts to understand. The main character, Jimmy Picard, tells his tragic past in a fashion only talented actors could pull off, and it makes you realize why Benicio Del Toro was cast out of all the actors that are around. I think you'll enjoy this a lot, especially if you're a fan of a good drama.

Jimmy is an army veteran who suffers from headaches. The doctors in the hospital can't find out why and so they assume that he must be suffering from a mental illness. And so they call a French doctor- anthropologist to help him with his condition. I watched this film only because George was an anthropologist and I study to become one. It was interesting to see who he talked to Jimmy and how he used Freud's theory about dreams and his anthropological knowledge about the value of dreams for the Indians to approach and cure his patient. So the story was interesting, but the shots were all over the place. Sometimes you have close ups out of the blue and other times weird angles, but the shots were not the main problem of the film. The story line is messed up as well, as when we are watching Jimmy and George talking, suddenly jump to an other day of treatment, or an other place, having two scenes that are not connected to each other. The story doesn't focus on Jimmy, but tries to portrait the doctor as well and their connection but it fails to do so as the whole venture is messy and badly done. So, for that I give Jimmy P. a 4 out of 10.

The other reviewers already provided extensive descriptions about the movie's plot and characters. So I will just skip it. This is a slow-paced movie but it flows in its own pace and takes you with it. There are some parts that you can relate to yourself, even though you are not a traumatized veteran, that makes you go "ahhh I know the feeling" or "It happens to me, too". I loved the way the dreams were shown to the audience. That made the movie more interesting and fun to watch for me. Benicio Del Toro was great as always. He adjusted himself to the slow-pace of the movie so well that it feels so natural. And thank God that I finally could see him at least kiss a lady in a movie. Hallelujah! Although at times, I must admit it was hard to believe that he was Native Indian, especially in the scenes when he is surrounded by real Native Indians, he still pulls it so well and gives a terrific performance, so much that you feel for him, and believe that he is in fact a person with a soul pain. I also loved how well Mathieu Amalric played the eccentric anthropologist although his character's eccentricity was a bit of cliché. He still managed to make me believe in his role. All in all, if you are not into fast-paced action movies or movies with a surprise unexpected turn of events, but more inclined to watch real world movies with a human touch, than you should give this one a chance.

I've always enjoyed and believed Benicio Del Toro in the roles he plays. Here, he plays a very careful, methodical Native American, Jimmy Picard,who has clearly been affected by his military service. When the "regular" doctors don't know what to make of him, he is examined by a Mojave Indian Georges Devereux (Mathieu Amalric), who may or may not be who he claims to be. They spend a lot of time showing and examining dreams. This makes sense, since dreams play such a large part of both the Native American and the psychology culture. At 117 minutes, it IS pretty long. But it's certainly entertaining; a mix of Native American culture and the psychology. You can make what you want out of the dreams, but each one is its own little story. Directed by Frenchman Arnaud Desplechin. This is currently showing on netflix. I'd like to see some of his other projects.

It's 1948. Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro) is a Blackfoot from Browning, Montana. He has debilitating symptoms after suffering head trauma during the War in France. The government doctors can't find any explanation other than possible psychological problems. They call in French anthropologist George Devereux (Mathieu Amalric) to examine for any cultural problems in the Indian. They extend Devereux's stay as he starts to make inroads. Devereux is joined by his married mistress Madeleine (Gina McKee). Del Toro delivers a good performance although he does mumble sometimes. It doesn't help that Devereux has a noticeable French accent. The best parts of the movie are the flashbacks. Jimmy's life before is a series of interesting vignettes. His present day is a lot less interesting. It would have been more compelling drama if he is faking. I don't care about Devereux's private life or his character. I also don't find Jimmy's treatment that dramatic. I would like better a movie derived from his flashbacks.

JIMMY P. is structurally a mess. Director Arnaud Desplechin is never quite sure what he wants the film to say: whether it comments on the status of Native Indians in postwar Amerıca; the suspicious status of much activity going under the name of psychology; life in institutions based on locking people up and asking questions later; or asking us to reflect on the fine dividing line between madness and sanity. The plot is a straightforward one: Jimmy Picard (Benicio Del Toro), a Native Indian veteran of World War II, suffers from terrible headaches. Confined to an institution, he comes under the care of maverick psychologist Georges Devereux (Benicio Del Toro), who nurses Picard back to health through a series of insistent questions while probing deeply into his sexual past. There is only one snag: Devereux's background is equally shady; he might or might not be a practicing psychiatrist, and he himself undergoes therapy at the end of the film. Shot in atmospheric colorlessness, the film recreates a world where anyone differing from racial or psychological norms - as constructed by whites - is automatically identified as deviant, and hence not worth treating. It is only due to Devereux's persistence that Picard recovers at all; and even then, the psychiatrist has to browbeat the institution's director Dr. Menninger (Larry Pine) into agreement. The actual process of recovery is perfunctorily handled; while the racial themes become lost in a convoluted subplot involving Devereux's friend Madeleine (Gina McKee), Howard Shore's musical score is unnecessarily intrusive, its syrupy fat chords directing attention away from Picard's soliloquy describing his mental state, almost as if director Desplechin was under the impression that viewers could not concentrate on words alone. The ending is equally unsatisfactory, as we have no idea what will happen to Picard, once released from the institution. He vows to see his family, but the potential traumas presented by the workaday world after such a long time spent in confinement are simply left unexplored. In many ways JIMMY P. is something of a wasted opportunity to make a comment on discrimination and its consequences in America's past.

The visuals in Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian are almost, almost worth the price of admission. The opening scene of the film beautifully articulates setting and irony by showing the grassy plains of America while Native American flute music is played in the backdrop. It's a comforting, soft opening to a film that is erected predominately off of complex discussion and ideology. The film stars Benicio Del Toro in a role he clearly embraced and enjoyed, playing Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Indian, who has returned from war with seriously debilitating symptoms, most specifically, a crippling headache. Jimmy is placed under the care of George Devereux (Mathieu Amalric), a real-life French doctor and anthropologist, who specializes in ethnology and psychoanalysis. The two meet together and form a quaint bond between their lengthy discussions about Native American history and culture, stemming from Devereux's desire to learn about the culture, as an anthropologist often does and Jimmy's checkered past, which involves troubled love and a teenage daughter that another man is raising. With the right directorial methods and smooth, engaging writing, Jimmy P. could easily be a film that one can effortlessly sink into, investing in its characters and learning a thing or two about psychological methods. It just so happens that my semester of high school psychology delved into Freudian ideas and psychoanalysis quite extensively, both principles are based on three key ideas: the inner conscious and unconscious act as dueling forces in the mind, the discussion and population of defense mechanisms in order for people to cope or estrange themselves from their past, and the idea that dreaming means more than disjointed shows that play in your head while you sleep. Making a film centered around often complex and occasionally droning material, especially when that film is about the founding days of a division in psychology, is unbelievably challenging, so based on that, it's surprising to say Jimmy P. succeeds as well as it does. French director and co-writer Arnaud Desplechin (who wrote the film with Julie Peyr and Kent Jones, respectively) does all he can to make the film as absorbing as possible, and for the first hour or so, his efforts are effective, as we watch Jimmy and Devereux invest in some great conversational banter that is geared more towards cultural relativism than it is in trying to structure cheap and expected payoffs. However, the film runs out of gas when you realize just how stiff and frequently dull the material gets. Perhaps it really is no fault of the trio of writers, nor Desplechin himself, but the fact that the ideas presented in the film are difficult to make engaging on an entertainment level. Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian works for a little while because it's interesting to see how a significant subsector of psychology was born by a doctor who was clearly interested in learning about different walks of life and the makeup of cultures and people of groups he didn't belong to. Amalric embodies the mindset of an anthropologist/psychologist quite nicely here, effectively making for a character we can appreciate. However, the stiffness of the film catches up to it, with the film's discussions in its second and third act becoming greatly long-winded and the entire project slowly running out of steam before reaching the conclusion. Rather than rewarding and captivating, the ending comes off a long-awaited conclusion to a film that was so close to making a film about psychology absorbing for two hours. Starring: Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric. Directed by: Arnaud Desplechin.