ALWAYS (1985; w/d/p Henry Jaglom)

Narrator David (Jaglom) addresses camera (no 4th wall/superego, all characters expressions of single unifying personality) concerning impending divorce (saved for ending: marriage also w/ audience, film about relationship btwn performer + viewer/art + reality), wife Judy expected soon (he seated sheepishly in small "waiting" room child awaiting unwilling birth) to sign papers (bring into reality, as film will its own inchoate meanings), imagined in doorway ("conjured" better word, à la 1st film A Safe Place’s opening magician) day she announced she was leaving (birth-separation men's traumatic loss o/t feminine [he shot in uterine orange of lamp, she across room in bright – exterior – sunlight], leaving them incomplete, "fetuses" still awaiting birth); home movies of wedding like ghosts in similar psychic interior (vintage song on sdtrk adding Shining allusions to eternality of drama, smiling faces – including deceased parents – like ancient masks for man whose "happy future in [his] past") mind conjuring ghosts (archetypes – elements of Self) to be reconfigured in later guests (same etymological root), upcoming 4th of July party ironic Independence Day opposite.

Prepares dinner for her (nourishing Unconscious he’s about to depart from at end of dream) for 1st time in life (late acknowledgment of need to feed/honor anima; fish Jonah to Safe Place’s Noah, also about male alienation from femininity lost at ending), "poisoning" (half-joking paranoia inner truth: he no longer "agrees" w/ her) causing overnight stay (returned in order to examine dynamics btwn he + her "spirit"/meaning, actress Patrice Townsend actually recent former Mrs Jaglom) when elder notary Samuel (senex, or Wise Man w/i) refuses to sign papers (Self-awareness of loose ends "she"/Muse can tie up: common anima role as healer/connector to feeling-self); wakes in bed w/ him (chaste sleepover impossibility of sex/"knowledge of" dream/ghost), dream-recalling talk w/ her dad (real dad: gentle Bud Townsend, dir of Nightmare in Wax) next door (David equivalent to father – Jaglom 8 yrs her senior – reason she needs to move on) encouraging her to stay w/ David (2nd senex, rationality/consciousness dispensed w/ early on till re-incarnated at height of dream) + calls off work at Yoga Center (spiritual core from which she dispatched to attend to David, which task severs her from own tranquil center) + has sister Peggy (like Judy, recently back in town: another healing agent brought up from psychic depths) bring vitamins etc (bolstering soul, as she does for him; like sci-fi remedies/breathing devices for spell in hostile environment).

Weekend guests Lucy + Eddie arrive (company/conversation his health food), out of house 1st time since son’s birth 2 ½ yrs ago (roughly period of D+J estrangement, child David himself post-breakup living satellite life outside of own), Ed antsy to hit town (part of self craving freedom, visitation David "entertaining" all perspectives at once) + wanting to move back (gravitational pull of secretly-desired independence; "return" à la Judy + Peggy); Peg pulls in w/ boyfriend Max (in his ice-cream truck: bearing both un + healthy goods, she similarly enriching + destructive libido) whom she met in New York (other-side-of-country/consciousness, he "solid," passive intellectual vs soft, "feeling" David's frequent "Don’t think"s) + all hug + proceed to relate (mind in colloquy w/ constituent parts, gathering by pool à la hearth – uterine-Edenic center where all converge + commingle).

David’s sadness that he feels un-known (fe/male selves not in harmony) + so will never be known (by self awa others: Judy his agent of self-k –à la Muse, or filmmaking, frustration w/ her as w/ yet-unrealized movie [2B found in editing]), she not feeling known either (unfamiliarity w/ own anima leaving self-k impossible); Max brings Peg’s stilts (he elevates her; libido's ability to rise above chaos she creates) by which she makes living (nature of eros to uplift self, often at others’ expense) + she announces their engagement (key to uniting w/ fem pwr Her elevation, as D late discovers; betrothal news to Max: capricious Love, not-David+Judy playing out opposite/parallel drama), that night fighting over skee-ball (D’s arcade games, framed comics panels + cartoon posters arrested development, impending separation from Judy as from mother/childhood) while Ed skips out on own (fracturing among constituents innate instability + dreaming mind losing grip on wholeness/integrity).

David finds Lucy bathing in Swiss Miss (irrationality of talking to female friend in tub mind’s further severing from normality; D confronting own naked need) for its phenylethylamine (chemical in chocolate giving feeling of being in love, she expression of D’s own earlier avowed choc-obsession), then tells Judy of childhood hero Hoppy the Marvel Bunny (fantasy his medication) + discussing make-up sex (cf Bunny, procreation another salve), drunken Ed (sleep-intoxicated by-the-books not-David/consciousness) coming home to Peg's seduction (descent into erotic unconscious + fulfillment of D’s desire); Lucy, reading HOW TO MAKE LOVE TO A MAN (following post-coital Ed’s rebuff: eternally relation-seeking anima working twd unity tho dishonored by animus), overhears Peg + Judy's conversation below how "everything got hard" after c’hood (when anima-animus separation occurred) + David + J talking about insubstantial balance in life (intercut w/ her earlier yogic exercises, Lucy ameliorating presence on high à la frequent camera pans to/from upper window of Olympic nextdoor to soundtrack chorus of "Folks Who Live on the Hill," ie own apotheosized selves that coulda been [unlived existence ghosts/gods ever watching blankly + unhelpfully]).

At backyard pool party next day (Independence Day opposite wedding reception in same location, return to Eden/womb to begin again), cranky neighbor Sam (cf noble notary Samuel: not benevolent deity watching from above/next door) seduces Lucy (he agent of separation, as opposed to namesake who refused to sign divorce papers; satisfaction, also, via rapacious not-self, of mommy-desire aroused in choco-tub) while stilting Peggy goes off w/ 2 gate-crashers (1 played by son of Sam/Bob Rafelson; not all guests in house/mind benign, as no one wholly romanticized) + others talk sex (including David-brother Mickey, on end of rabbi’s 1000-yr prohibition on polygamy: ego's allegiance to one personality yielding to willy-nilly identities at traditional height of dream [+ statute of limitations up on D’s loyalty to Judy]) while D yaks w/ Party Philosopher (per credits: jovial, bearded Andre Gregory [cf similarly bearded elder Samuel] reprising Orson Magi role from Safe Place + modeling Welles’ similar in next Jaglom Someone to Love) about impossibility of knowing other people (vis à vis D+J’s sim talk, Philo senex come to party to peacefully resolve question [after earlier refusal]: not knowing is good – the effort to know creates a bridge btwn us + others [by which we come to k ourselves]); overlooking revelers in pool (incl’g skinnydipping Peg + friends: water nymphs in mythological unconscious, indicating fecundity w/i even as relationship sundering), D+J agree "we’re the same species" (gene pool, all achieving anarchic harmony) + D concludes "Nothing is everything + it’s sufficient" (reaching ground zero + getting right w/ it in preparation for re-birth into world J-free).

David + Judy cuddle on floor beneath jukebox (prelude to making love in pool, completing descent from "Folks on the Hill" fantasy) just inside backdoor (to Eden, from which he thrust by Judy/Eve’s decision to leave, as from mother’s womb), she acknowledging problem in "submerging self in" his life (D/Adam’s subjugation of anima-Eve [unseen God glowering from heights own unrealized – othered, projected – superiority, unseen because formless, archetypal, interior] causing her to seek own pwr bringing his loss of paradise), after which they both return to pool to make love (reconciliation in amniotic womb ["It’s about coming out the other side"] + finally uniting w/ dream, orgasm similar self-obliviation) – or do they?: David, alone, takes stock of deserted grounds (restless spirits exorcised [called back into self] by serene climactic love [her absence assimilation, also], mind at peace preparing for solitude of dreamless non-REM sleep) + sez "Happy ending, baby" (à la comic-ideals he lamented earlier, successfully transforming reality into dreamworld created around self) to empty chair (audience-in-film, à la end of Someone, where Jag character addresses similarly vacated theater/own heart) before cutting back to reality (awake), truth in that "knowing" self/achieving oneness w/ beloved means recalling projections back into self (when projections all we have).

Alone back in opening "waiting" room (returned to womb, pool sex re-conceiving self), recounts breath-holding contest at camp (in another pool: creative artist never away from uterine unconscious long) he always won because only one willing to drown (cf "Sink or swim, Billy" Slaughterhouse Five vignette: ability to delve psychic waters more intensely than most, awa stubbornness in relationships + need to "stay under" + explore there; "never died" vindication of methods), refusing now to write self happy ending (not wishing to manipulate Judy/Patrice; permitting her freedom acknowledging her selfhood, finally "knowing" her by releasing her from his conception [admitting he can’t know her]), telling her/audience(/self) "You have permission 2B happy in life" (allowance vs. imposed happiness of prerogatory ending – offering beginning instead of conclusion) before calling "CUT" (umbilical cord – both now "independent"); last shot David in Swiss Miss tub (from waiting rm back to amniotic, loving nurturance, marinating self in sweetness preparing/incubating self for re-birth un-connected to P/J/mother’s love [bonus question: is this a positive statement?], his look suggesting kid-self in pool willing again to drown in artificial sensation to prove a point).