Film Review
Claire Beth Steinberger
“Breathing”: The Psychoanalytic Orientation of Karl Markovics
This review of the Austrian film “Breathing” (“Atmen”) draws attention to Karl Markovics’s
metaphoric and finely textured psychoanalytic orientation. As an evocative coming- of- age
story, the black and white German-speaking film (English subtitles) wrestles with the multimeaning impact of severe and “unrepresented” (infantile) trauma. Highlighting the psychic
challenges facing an incarcerated (soon to be released) young man, the film stirs associations to
Blos’s classic (The Adolescent Passage 1979) emphasizing the adaptive need to rework
etiological struggle and unhealthy and/or arresting resolutions. On another plane, the director
appears to implicate a broadened historical analogy that looks at the effects of communal trauma
on sociocultural identity and reconciliation (Volkan, 2006).
INTRODUCTION
Breathing’s signature poster carries a disquieting message. We see a young man gliding face
down -- arms outstretched -- at the bottom of a recreational swimming pool. A name plate or tag
hangs loosely around his neck. The early communication signals Markovics’s preference for
sensorial and affective imagery and metaphor.
Set in a juvenile detention center (a metaphor in itself ), Martin Gschlacht’s deft
cinematography offers multi-perspectival starkly-shaded images that intensify the foreboding
tones of the center’s clanking steel doors and long isolated hallways. A pervasive sense of ‘onthe-edge’ danger continues through the juxtaposition of silence, restrained (often brutally
detached) language and deliberately paced action. The overlay of continuous mobility –
highways, cars, trains and body transporting vehicles – impute adolescent restlessness as well as
images of a traumatic national history.
[Note: Written and directed by Karl Markovics (with cinematographer Marin Gschlacht),
Breathing won Directors’ Fortnight Prize for European Film, Cannes Film Festival and Best
Film and Best Actor (Thomas Schubert as Roman Kogler) for the Seventeenth Sarajevo Film
Festival, 2011. ].
A TRAUMATIC NARRATIVE
Spanning two weeks of time, Breathing depicts a developmental (psychosocial) turning point,
where Roman Kogler’s opportunity to leave his detention center (“home”) depends on his
finding – and holding – a work apprenticeship and passing a parole hearing set for two weeks
ahead. Resonating with the main character’s lost and/or “unknowing” state of mind, the
audience lives in the dark with little knowledge of prior events or “Kogler’s” history. Insight
(meaning) emerges through a shadowy constellation of action, metaphor and kinesthetic
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imagery, where the “hauntings” of the past appear in symbolic form such as the repetitive
swimming ritual and Kogler’s choice of a mortuary worksite. The site seems to function as a
bridge or “ transitional space” for playing with and reorganizing psycho-sensorial trauma
(Schore 2003, Winnicott 1971).
An Adolescent Passage
The film opens with the nineteen year old Roman Kogler living in a juvenile detention center. A
well-meaning parole counselor is doing his best to help his resistant detainee find a workrelease program required for the parole hearing set for two weeks ahead Sitting in the
passenger seat of the car, Kogler’s stone-faced expression and refusal to lock his seat belt offer
an immediate picture of the young man’s angry tight-lipped opposition. On a more complex
(analytic) level, the audience might intuit some ambivalence – perhaps terror – around leaving
the detention structure.
On his first day working at a metal shop (early in the film), we hear nothing until Kogler lets out
a loud panicked scream (his first spontaneous sound) when the foreman unexpectedly covers his
head with a protective helmet. Kogler’s alarm gives notice of some frightening – perhaps
dissociated and unconscious – connection. When Kogler unexpectedly applies for a mortuary
job site that is advertised in a daily paper, he makes an unconsciously driven choice that links to
a critical sequence of transformative events. In this way, internal change and reformation take
place through the mortuary setting – a “transitional space” for contacting trauma-related
residue and building ( psychic) integration. For example, emotionally-tense interactions with a
formerly sadistic older co-worker lead to needed (parental) modeling experience and repetitive
care for a line of anonymous corpses touches Kogler’s affective core. He seems to thaw in
an environment marked by the narrow line between life and death. In a hesitant moment before
moving a cadaver, a visibly agitated Kogler tells the co-worker, “His body is still warm
The Absent Mother
Triggered by the arrival of a female corpse with his own surname, Kogler begins an intense
search to find his biological mother. The director suggests that human beings must confront
and/or make meaning out of the unknown and/or the “lost” parts of themselves in order to move
through developmental transitions and tasks (re: Erikson ). In a sequence of evocative episodes
Kogler connects with his mother, making his first contact in a department store where he finds
his her lying corpse-like on a mattress she intends to buy. When Kogler investigates why his
mother gave him away, he learns (in a dramatic flashback) that in a fit of rage she had tried to
suffocate her screaming infant with a pillow. He learns that his mother had given him away to
protect him from herself.
(Note: In the important “flashback” sequence, Markovics highlights a critical developmental
(individual and cultural) need to contact and make sense of the gaps and (dissociated) traumas of
the past in order to move forward. He points, as well, to the complex meaning of mothering and
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the “maternal instinct” as well as the role of psychic denial and resistance when certain “cries”
disturb the cultural status quo).
Kogler’s sudden awareness (knowledge) is significant at this developmental juncture. The
recovery (uncovering) of lost and/or split-off “truths” leads to psychic release. Markovics
implies this positive trajectory in an early scene where Kogler shares a train compartment with a
flirtatious young American lady. In a touching moment when Kogler watches her wave from
the window of the departing train, we get a glimpse of future possibility – the hopeful
overcoming of traumatic entrapment.
In the final and emotionally salient scene, a psychically liberated Kogler stands near the grave of
the young man he had unintentionally killed when his opponent tried to cover his head.
Understanding his “story” and the motives for his behavior allows Kogler to get in touch with
feelings of guilt and remorse. He can move on as a whole and/or more integrated person.
Metaphor and Analogy
Breathing’s metaphoric communication extols a rich multi-leveled (psychoanalytic)
appreciation. Viewed as a “traumatic narrative”, the film tells a story about the
developmental impact of (infantile) corporally-held and affectively-linked trauma -- “the
echoes of events that have transpired and have left their mark indirectly” (Charles, 2016, p.48).
The analytic frame helps us “see’ how a young man expresses – and transcends – his own
perilous (traumatizing) history. It is also about the power of the “unconscious” to both bind –
and release – human suffering.
Swimming Pool, Morgue, Detention Center
The detention center’s recreational swimming pool serves as a dominating multi-meaning
metaphor (shown three times). On one level, Markovics alludes to an analytic appreciation of
psychic depth, where the pool acts as an unconscious “container” for primary (fluid) neuroaffective and sensorial attachment experience and “unrepresented” traumatic states (Schore
2003) . Second, serving as a site for corporal ( trauma-related) enactments, the swimming ritual
represents Kogler’s (unconscious) striving for mastery (“life”) over the biologically-held
(“death”) trauma. Here, repetitive breath-holding and death- defying rituals can be understood
as a “pro-life” (pro-aggressive) instinctual and ego- related capacities, perhaps a counterpoint to
an early classical (death-drive) interpretation. Third, the pool as a watery-womb alludes to an
instinctual (unconscious) search for a primordial maternal (prenatal) union. In this significant
way, Kogler’s maternal attachment ultimately leads to the pivotal transformative (meaningmaking) contact of the narrative.
The Mortuary Worksite. Markovics’s evocative “death” symbolization relates to the early
“death-defying” trauma (cited above) in several ways. The mortuary worksite expresses
(unconscious) yearnings for the dead and/or absent mother, ultimately enabling Kogler to
struggle with the complex meanings of early (unformulated) “loss” trauma on a more conscious
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level. As he begins to fill in the “gaps” of his own identity and personal history, the repetitive
involvement with “corpse experience” becomes the “road to the unconscious” – the avenue for
the gradual reintegration of dissociated corporally-held trauma.
On an oedipal level, Kogler’s relationship with the older morgue worker offers a needed parental
(e.g., paternal) role model, particularly relevant to the adolescent phase of ego consolidation and
gender-related identifications. In a psychoanalytically-oriented way, we observe Kogler move
from an angry or defensively rejecting young man (driving with the well-meaning parole
counselor early in the film) to a more emotionally open and accessible self.
Detention Center. The detention center suggests “internal” (intrapsychic) as well as external
incarceration (arrest) and allude to the nature of past acts and consequences. The detention
center’s sadistic guards and routine strip searches reinforce an analytic appreciation of
“dissociated” states, particularly psychic splitting and defensive functions that protect and/or
deny the more vulnerable aspects of the self (Bromberg 1998).
Finally, Markovic’s representations point to his concern for psychic resilience and
transformative possibility. Symbolic expressions include Kogler’s daily viewing of a subway
station’s vacation poster (“Dive into Adventure”) and his determined effort to release a trapped
bird from a tool closet with a telling overhead sign, stating “Exit”.
A Psychoanalytic (Psychotherapeutic) Framework
Breathing can be explored as an enfolding psychoanalytic therapy that leads to psychic
(unconscious) discovery and relational enactments that connect to (early) dissociated affective
viscerally-held trauma. In this (psychoanalytic) rendering, the audience serves as the
“unknowing” analyst and “participant-witness”.
In this clinical analogy, a frightened and defensively resistant patient (Roman Kogler) enters the
session and a range of relational configurations and/or split-off states begin to evolve. The
enfolding transitional space comes alive with “characters” and imagoes that express a matrix of
transference projections and/or inductions that include the abandoning (“dead”), longed-for
and/or destructive mother, the frightened and breath-holding vulnerable infant/son; the
humiliating and cruel detention guard and the supportive and defensively demeaned (parole
officer) mentor. As the therapeutic relationship develops, we can imagine transformative
possibilities that include risk-taking and assertive self imagoes and an increasing introduction of
fantasies concerning work, peer and sexual and intimate relationships (e.g., the flirtatious and
seductive engagement on the train).
Ultimately, this analogy draws attention to the therapeutic process and the capacity for bringing
“unnamed” (unformulated) traumatic states and/or “hauntings” into the psychoanalytic field. In
the “web” of nonverbal cues, fantasies and behavioral enactments (e.g., screams), the analyst
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comes to function as an “old” as well as “new” object where she re-engages infantile and more
mature (oedipal) identifications (Loewald 1960).
Conclusion
From a developmental trajectory, infantile (sensorial) trauma carries the residue of psychic
distress (“complexes”) marked by neuro-affective states, imagoes and fantasies (Jung 1928).
I suggest that we imagine that the analyst and patient find their intuitive way, holding their
breath and swimming in the (unconscious) pool of past, present and future relational possibility.
Markovics creates a vision for life affirming (growth-oriented) instincts and aims.
Breathing appears to struggle with questions about the nature of human “will” and the
(unconscious) drive for (corporal-psychic) survival. In this interpretation, the film presents a
tale of psychic (ego) mastery and self-reparation – the overcoming of “suffocating”
(traumatizing) bondage. This Kleinian “redemptive” depiction is highlighted in the cemetery
(grave site) scene at the film’s conclusion and in Kogler’s need to find his (early) mother in an
attempt to contact and reconstruct his internal history (identity) and psychic “wholeness” – a
completion of the adolescent “passage” .
A Historical Perspective.
ON a nonverbal (cinemagraphic) level, Breathing’s stark continuous “transporting”
symbolization suggests a road to nowhere -- the ambivalent crossroads between life and death.
The repetitive views of highways and prison cells (internal and external structures) have a
dooming quality. Yet, the worksite ( mortuary) environment turns into a life-affirming
opportunity, offering a picture of termination as well as birth. This positive and futuristic (egodominating) message is expressed in the uncanny advertisement, “Dive into Adventure”. We
might wonder if Markovics is challenging the spectator/audience with the memory of a
formative national trauma and the need to revisit a frozen cultural heritage – the
“motherland’s” history.
Finally, Markovics’s transformative story highlights the developmental need to rework past
trauma at individual as well as cultural levels of meaning-making and reconstruction. What
can be closer to a psychoanalytic appreciation – or analogy?
Sources
Bromberg, P.M. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma and
Dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Charles, M. (2016). Ashes of remembrance: Reconfiguring the phoenix. Psychoanalytic Review.
103: 41-67.
Jung, C.G. (1928). The psychological foundations of the belief in spirits. Collected Works 8.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Loewald, H. W. (1960). On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. In The Essential Loewald:
Collected Papers and Monographs. Hagerstown MD: University Publishing Group,
2000, pp.221-256.
Schore, A.N. (2003) Affect Regulation and the repair of the self. NY: W.W. Norton & Co.
Volkan, V. (2006). Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts. Charlottesville,
VA.: Pitchstone Publishing.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publicaitons.
__________________
Claire Beth Steinberger is Senior faculty, National Psychological Association for
Psychoanalysis; and faculty, Training Program in Family Law and Family Forensics; Training
Institute of Mental Health and Object Relations Institute. Adjunct Professor, Long Island
University, Graduate Studies, Department of Counseling and Development.
The author wishes to thank NPAP Candidate Susan Kassouf for introducing Breathing to
the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (January 31, 2015) and for asking me
to serve as discussant on this fascinating project. Her keen intelligence and concern for
European (German and Austrian) history and Markovics’s personal story were inspiring.
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