J. A. Bayona's Ecstatic Truth

Abstract

Abstract

The aim of this study is to seek the ecstatic truth that lies in the Spanish filmmaker, J. A. Bayona.

In order to do so we have analyzed his four films, The Orphanage (2007), The Impossible (2012), A Monster Calls (2016), and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), as well as the first episode of the television series Penny Dreadful (2014).

Our perspective has been a psychological one. Bayona defines his first three films as a trilogy on the mother-child relationship and death. Thus, we have studied his films from the point of view of Freud’s theory of the unconscious and the primal scene.

Our research shows that Bayona’s films may be failing in trying to deal with two unconscious conflicts: 1) his need to detach from an archaic mother figure; and 2) his need to get rid of the anguish caused by the possibility of not being born, which is also related to the first conflict.

Keywords: cinema; art; Bayona; truth, psychology; unconscious; psychoanalysis.