Brian De Palma’s film, Obsession (1976), harkens
back to Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo
(1958) primarily in that resemblances between a character-contrived myth,
or story, and the closely related, though different in key respects, social
reality in the film (i.e., what’s really going on in the film’s story-world)
trigger perplexed reactions for the character being duped by other characters
in the film. I thought she died, but there she is . . . or maybe that’s
another woman who looks like her—so much so that I believe I can will the woman
to be her. The human mind may be such that it convinces itself of even a
supernatural explanation than admit that one’s own mind has been fooled by someone
else’s cleverness. At the very least, resonances between the impossible and the
possible can increase the uncertainty of the beholder. Doubt as to what is really
going on can be stultifying, and the human mind is all too willing to fill in
the gap by either resorting to a supernatural explanation or making something
so as if believing it to be so is sufficient to render it really the case.
The full essay is at "Obsession."
