The other day I came across a fairly recent (2023) and very underrated film drama – ‘Freud’s Last Session’ about a meeting that may have taken place in London during September 1939 just as Britain declared war on Germany between the famous founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the great Christian apologist and academic CS Lewis. Freud is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins (who actually played CS Lewis some 30 years previously in ‘Shadowlands’) whilst Lewis is played by Matthew Goode.
It is a fascinating and absorbing drama between two giants of their respective fields who had completely opposite views about the existence of God, but who both agreed that the greatest mystery of the time was about God-whether He exists, and once you have made your mind up about that, what you do about it. It is based on a long running course at Harvard University on the question of God from Freud’s and Lewis’ point of views.
At the time of their imagined meeting, Freud and what remained of his family (he lost many family members in the concentration camps) was living in Hampstead, dying of mouth cancer and disputed CS Lewis’ worldview who had mocked Freud’s teachings in a recent publication.
CS Lewis was the most influential and popular believer of faith based on reason. He had become an atheist, originally thinking the Bible to be “..a fictional anthology of myths and legends” but was, amongst other incidents, himself challenged by friend and ‘Lord of the Rings’ author (and Catholic) JRR Tolkien to examine the evidence, which is what he did (some 1600 years or so of scholarship). The end result was that Lewis came to firmly believe famously stating: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.
Freud for his part was convinced God was a fantasy linked to people wanting a commanding father figure in their lives, and that the idea of God was in his book “..a ludicrous and insidious lie..”, with science and reason meaning you no longer should believe in God.
‘Freud’s Last Session’ is then a meeting of great minds, mostly civil, where CS Lewis aimed to explain why an intelligent person such as him believed in God and Christianity and saying “I challenge your belief in disbelief”. It is thought provoking stuff with Lewis saying that you don’t , as Freud had suggested have to have an obsessional neurosis or be an imbecile to believe in God. Lewis’ main argument was that a critical assessment of the evidence leads to a strong conviction that Jesus and God are real, that He walked the earth, that His death transformed myth into truth with the promise that for those who believe in Him will in turn have their lives changed.
As Freud, Hopkins does not offer any proof that God does not exist, simply his psychological argument that God is a projection of a childish wish to have a father figure to protect and guide them. Freud’s arguments are cynical in that he argues that there is no Being who rewards you for obeying their rules, something CS Lewis deconstructs, showing that in the world we have signposts and lessons that point to a Great Intelligence being at work.
World War II had a huge impact on both Freud and Lewis. Within a few weeks of this meeting and with Freud’s terminal cancer worsening, the psychoanalyst committed suicide. Lewis took in evacuees and that led to that story of four children entering a magical kingdom called “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”- the start of the Narnia stories which were Christian allegories, and the world has probably not been the same since.
‘Freud’s Last Session’ is currently showing on Sky Cinema Premiere- the trailer for it can be found below.
As a child and even as a young adult there was one person who more than most helped me get through the tough times that you have growing up and also someone that inspired me to write- it is someone I suspect most people may not have heard of -Bernie Taupin. If you have ever sung along to an Elton John classic like Your Song, Daniel, Rocketman or Sacrifice then you have been singing the words that said Bernie Taupin wrote. He has been writing with Elton for over 55 years- becoming one of the most successful popular writing partnerships of all time. Bernie, although now a naturalised American was as English as roast beef having been born and brought up in rural Lincolnshire working in dead end jobs before he struck out on the ‘Yellow Brick Road’ to come to London to eventually team up with a young musician called Reginald Dwight -who we all now know as Elton Hercules John.
Bernie has been one of the few people who has consistently written song lyrics that mean more than just something for a singer to sing to, they are about things he cares about- the struggle for fulfilment, how to navigate important personal relationships, his love for what could best be called ‘Americana’ (the real wild west of America) and ultimately about what is true-he was and isn’t one to just write about what you might call ‘soppy love’ -he wants to talk about what is real and meaningful in our lives. As he once wrote about him and Elton: “No lies at all just one more tale about the Captain (Elton) and the kid (Bernie). As a kid myself I went through a teenage ritual of buying a new Elton LP (vinyl record to the younger generation!), taking the record out of its sleeves, putting it on a turntable, switching it on, and lying down in my darkened bedroom to soak in the music and Bernie’s lyrics. I was also heartened to hear that fairly recently Bernie became a Christian-always quite nice to know that a personal hero or heroine of yours believes in Jesus. His personal testimony is perhaps similar to others in that he had given up on church saying “..there was no vitality. It was drab and stuffy, overly pious and centred on a droning, unenthusiastic sermon conducted by a charisma-free priest.. the emphasis on wrath and retribution far outweighed the presence of a benevolent God”.
I suspect that may mirror a number of people’s own early experiences of church where the faith was taught in an overly zealous manner so much so that it put people off Christianity for a long time – in some cases for ever. How then did Bernie come back into the ‘fold’? It was thanks to a fine woman, his wife, Heather who has an admirable but captivating faith that had a powerful effect on him-he has talked about how “I wanted what she had, that sort of compassion and understanding, free of pious inequality and liberating in ethical diversity”. Bernie now belongs to a church which he describes as a ‘rehab for the soul’ and where there is a simplicity and joy he can relate to.
Of course, anyone who knows Elton and Bernie’s songs will know that religion has always played a big role in them with songs like Where to Now St Peter?, Religion and Cry to Heaven, and as Bernie has said “the Bible is the lyricist’s best crib sheet”. However, my personal favourite is a 1972 soul song Salvation which highlights Bernie’s desire for all of us to find Jesus -his powerful lyrics are below and if you click onto the link you can hear a great version of it:
I have to say my friends, we’re looking for a light ahead
In the distance a candle burns, Salvation keeps the hungry children fed
It’s gotta take a lot of Salvation what we need are willing hands
You must feel the sweat in your eyes, you must understand Salvation
A chance to put the devil down, without the fear of hell
Salvation spreads the Gospel round, and free you from yourself…
In September 1944, an 18 year old Polish highland woman was captured by the Nazis and with other people was held in a Gestapo cell, awaiting her fate before being sent to the death camps. With what is believed to be a broken tooth, she scrawled on her cell wall this prayer:
“Oh Mamma, do not cry, no most pure Queen of Heaven, protect me always, Hail Mary -Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, age 18, detained since 25 September 1944”.
In 1973 Polish composer Henryk Gorecki visited the cell and amongst all the other inscriptions prisoners had made on the cell wall, he was deeply moved by Helena’s prayer. He explained that the other inscriptions were to him so loud and banal (“I’m innocent”, “Murderers” or “Free me”) whilst this young woman’s prayer was different – she was not crying or screaming out for revenge. Her only thought was about her own mother as it is she who will experience true despair.
As a result, the composer in 1976 wrote what is known as either ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ or its official title of ‘Symphony No. 3 Op. 36’. It is a symphony in three movements, but it is the 2nd movement (‘Lento e large- Tranquillissimo’ ) that is inspired by Helena’s ordeal and prayer. When it was first played, few listened, and critics dismissed the work. However, God it seemed had other ideas and in 1992 it was recorded by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta and something quite amazing happened. A piece of work written by someone few people outside of avant-garde eastern European classical music had heard of, sung in a language most people did not understand suddenly got a huge reaction from listeners on both sides of the Atlantic.
The CD topped the UK and US classical charts, it even reached no 6 in the mainstream music charts and was in the US Classical Music Chart for nearly 3.5 years, selling over a million copies. It is possibly the best selling contemporary classical record of all time. All because of one 18 year old’s prayer on a prison cell.
But why? I think the answer is that what Gorecki the composer produced with the soprano Dawn Upshaw is an 8 minute piece of slow music which has such emotional power that it feels it is just injected directly into the soul of whoever listens to it. It forces you to stop what you are doing and just listen, and it moved me like few pieces of music can-so much so that I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. It’s themes are Motherhood, despair, and faith. It starts with a wonderful folk drone, and it reaches a crescendo when the soprano reaches a climaxing top A b. I frequently cry when I listen to it.
But what of 18 year old Helena? God was not about to abandon her. In November 1944 she was being shipped on a train to Auschwitz when she was one of 12 people rescued by Polish partisans. She then walked over mountains and returned to her grandparents in her home town. For the rest of the war, people protected and hid her identity. In 1950 she was married and had five children. She died at the age of 73 in 1999.
You can hear the stunning music inspired by her prayer below:
Imagine if you will, a world where there are no violent crimes or pornography, women are not leered at, where people don’t keep checking their smartphones for the latest message, update or ‘like’, a place where the internet is not present, and you only use your mobile phone to actually talk to someone. A community where once a week people remember God, refrain from any deliberate activity or work, contemplate their spiritual life and spend quality time with their family.
Welcome then to the world of ‘Shtisel’. No it’s not a new swear word but a rather magnificent 3 season series on Netflix which, in my book, is probably the best show you haven’t seen but is among the most spiritually fulfilling you can find. Forget the likes of ‘Line of Duty’ (and that underwhelming ending) and instead allow yourself to be charmed by a generous, God filled, light-hearted and almost nostalgic wonder of a show.
Shtisel is an Israeli TV drama (in Hebrew but don’t worry it has English subtitles) which tells the story of four generations of a Haredi family living in Jerusalem and follows their ordinary lives as they fall in and out of love, deal with the bereavements, heartaches and choices they have to make to bring up their families and live and work by their faith. The Haredi community is an Ultra-Orthodox form of Judaism which lives strictly according to Jewish law and is opposed to most modern values and practices. I suppose the closest Christian example to it would be the Amish community in the USA and Canada who live simply and reject modern technology, although they are clearly of different faiths.
The series has become such a success because it charms through showing you a group of people where God and family are central to their lives and where they live a simpler, less materialist life. Its main character Akiva (Michael Aloni) is a twenty some guy teaching in the local Cheder (Torah school) who has a talent for drawing, but should he follow that gift outside of his community or is it his duty to get married, to bring up children as his people have for generations? Can he find the right woman and life partner to accept him as he truly is? Over its 33- 45 minute episodes we live their lives and find out that answer and more.
Part of its appeal is how it very gently lets us into what would seem to most people a fairly closeted and regimented world. A place where everyone entering a home touches the Mezuzah- a decorative door post that holds a parchment with a Jewish prayer from the Book of Deuteronomy (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”). When anyone eats or drinks anything they recite “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth”, and when someone dies, close family members take part in a Shiva where for 7 days you stay at home grieving over the departed. However, its aim is not to judge or condemn how they live their lives but to simply allow us to observe and understand them and we soon get charmed by their human frailties.
What Shtisel also shows us is the pressure and conflict between what a faith requires of individuals and how the modern world outside operates. As Haredims, day to day life is strictly controlled. Women have to dress modestly -not showing shoulders or too much of their legs. Wearing trousers is forbidden and married women have to wear a head covering. Men and women are separated in Synagogues and often on public transport . Men have to wear a black suit, white shirt, Homburg hat with payot (side locks) and beards are obligatory. Films and TV are opposed as is any form of secular education. You are married through ‘matchmakers’ and those who leave the communities can be shunned.
It is a way of life frankly that our current modern, more liberal society would not be able to comprehend or, if they had a choice,- allow. In modern parlance, it would surely be ‘cancelled’ for a variety of reasons. And yet, it can still be appealing.
It can teach something important about how people can live their lives in honouring God and in a number of respects, it shows us a society that can be preferable to the one which is currently being shaped in our own lives. In the West we have a ‘24/7’ society, where we are encouraged to buy and consume more, to be selfish and have what we want (not what we need). We have become increasingly secular, and society is more and more intolerant of alternative points of view whether that is about religion, racism, gender, sexuality, or politics. We are the poorer for that.
So, Shtisel is a welcome relief to show us another way of doing things. Although its characters’ lives are far from perfect with a variety of imbalances and inequalities in their own world, they do have some things that our modern society is desperately lacking and which we could be the better for.
