Jung at the Movies:
A series of seminars led by Elisabeth Pomès
An exploration of the theme of Individuation through: The Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993, on Sunday, September 6, 2026), A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977, on Sunday, September 13), and Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025, on Sunday, September 27). To attend 3 seminars for the price of 2, purchase here.
Seminar 1
The Remains of the Day: Missteps on the Path of Individuation
Sunday, September 6th 2026, 10:00am to 12:30pm
Tickets
In this seminar, we will explore The Remains of the Day as a profound psychological portrait of a man estranged from his own inner life. Through the character of the butler Stevens, the film offers a compelling study of duty, repression, emotional restraint, and the tragic consequences of a life lived in service to an idealized Persona.
Stevens embodies a dangerous over-identification with the social role — the impeccably dignified servant whose sense of worth depends entirely upon loyalty, discipline, and emotional self-erasure. In suppressing feeling, desire, moral uncertainty, and intimacy, Stevens gradually loses contact with essential dimensions of the Self. His inability to respond authentically to Miss Kenton, to confront the moral failures of Lord Darlington, or to acknowledge his own grief and longing, can be understood as critical failures on the Path of Individuation.
Jung conceived individuation as the lifelong process through which a person becomes psychologically whole by integrating unconscious aspects of the personality rather than remaining confined within a rigid social mask. Stevens, however, clings almost exclusively to Persona while disavowing vulnerability, Eros, spontaneity, and moral agency. The result is not merely emotional repression, but a profound narrowing of the soul. The film’s quiet devastation lies in Stevens’ gradual recognition that a life devoted entirely to service may also be a life insufficiently lived.
Seminar 2
A Special Day: “A meeting of two solitary souls” (Ettore Scola)
Sunday, September 13th 2026, 10:00am to 12:30pm
Tickets
In A Special Day (Una giornata particolare), Ettore Scola places two isolated individuals together during a day overshadowed by the spectacle of Fascist Italy. The film takes place in 1938 Rome on the day of Adolf Hitler's visit to Italy, when most citizens are out celebrating the alliance between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Inside an almost empty apartment building, two isolated people meet: Antonietta, a housewife exhausted by domestic servitude and internalized fascist ideology, and Gabriele, a dismissed radio announcer persecuted for being homosexual and politically suspect.
Antonietta and Gabriele briefly recognize one another beyond the identities imposed upon them by society and politics. A Special Day portrays the painful tension between persona and authenticity: the rigid social masks demanded by authoritarian culture versus the deeper, more spontaneous truth of the individual psyche. The encounter between Antonietta and Gabriele becomes a fleeting opening toward Individuation — toward the possibility of becoming more fully human through recognition of feeling, desire, and inner truth.
Over the course of a single day, the two marginalized individuals form a fragile emotional connection. Through the fleeting intimacy of Antonietta and Gabriele in Fascist Italy is the transformative possibility that can emerge through genuine encounter and self-recognition.
Seminar 3
Sentimental Value: Art, Connection and Emotional Truth
Sunday, September 27th 2026, 10:00am to 12:30pm
Sentimental Value is, at its core, a story about emotional wounds, artistic identity, memory, and silence. The film follows two sisters, Nora and Agnes, reconnecting uneasily with their estranged father Gustav, a famous but narcissistic film director, after the death of their mother. Gustav tries to turn the family’s past into art by making a film about their history, which forces everyone to confront unresolved pain.
By exploring memories, family inheritance, and emotional absence, the film explores how unresolved grief, artistic ambition, and familial expectations shape identity across generations. Characters struggle not only with one another, but with the emotional legacies they carry unconsciously. The film examines how Individuation requires confronting the past rather than remaining imprisoned within inherited narratives or emotional defenses.
Sentimental Value asks what it means to reclaim a more authentic relationship to oneself in the face of conformity, repression, political oppression, old roles as well as the powerful gravitational pull of Art Performance.
Viewing access for the seminar films
· The Remains of the Day — available as digital rental/purchase (Apple TV, Amazon Video, CosmoGo, Apple TV); may also be borrowed through Toronto Public Library.
· A Special Day — streaming on Criterion Channel, Apple TV; also likely available through Toronto Public Library DVD holdings.
· Sentimental Value — currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video in Canada, Apple TV, Plex rental, CosmoGo rental.
Toronto Public Library users should also check Hoopla and the TPL catalogue for physical copies.
Each gathering is designed as an independent seminar centered on a specific film. Participants are welcome to attend all three sessions or only those that particularly interest them. The three meetings do not need to be taken consecutively, nor do they build upon one another in a strictly sequential way.