The Seventh Veil

Unfortunatelly, they are still in there...

There's movie dialogues that have no match at all... may be is not just the words and the message, but also the performers, or the whole picture in wich they are include... even the cinematographic composition as a whole. So would be all those components wich make them so, so amazing. Otherwise, could just be only the good hand of the scriptwriters. Whatever be the reason, the british film The Seventh Veil, directed in 1945 by Compton Benett, has one of the best dialogues about human condition and what it turns out in front of others. Let's now make those lines talk for themselves:

[Before that, and in order to catch the meaning of this dialogue, let's only say a few introductory words (in case you don't see the movie I won't spoil nothing of it): The patient is a concert pianist who is almost catatonic, but this condiction is only psicological since she hasn't got another kind of organic injure to become in that state. Her doctor, Doctor Larsen, in the flesh of a very young Hebert Lom, is the one who tells in the asylum to Doctor Kendall:]

Doctor Larsen: -She does not speak at all if you question her? 

Doctor Kendall: -She doesn't answer. One will think she didn't hear if one doesn't know what she does.

Doctor Larsen: -She would talk to me. I should like to exame her under hypnosis.

Doctor Kendall: -Rather she is not cooperating under narcosis. And you really thinking it will help?

Doctor Larsen: -It may do. At least it'll tell us the nature of the injury to her mind. 

Doctor Kendall: -I know you fellows get remarkable results but I can't say I altogether like it. It seems a little prying. You see what I mean, Dr. Kendall.

Doctor Larsen: -The surgeon doesn't operate without first taking off the patient's cloth. Or nor do we with the mind. You know what the staple says: the human mind is like Salome at the begining of her dance. Hiden from the outside world by seven veils - veils of preserve, shyness, fear, that would go with friends. The average person will drop first one veil, then another, maybe three or four together. With a lover, she would take the fiveth, or even the sixth, but never the seventh. Never, you see: The human mind likes to cover its nakeness also to itself in order to keep its privicy. Salome drops some of hers but you never get a human mind to do that. And that's why I used narcosis. Five minutes on the narcosis and down to the seventh veil. Then we can see what is actually going on behind. Then we can really help... I'll be back tommorrow at 3 o'clock. You have the patient ready please, and goodbye. Dr. Kendall.

Seems that Doctor Kendall used a good metaphor to say how this cage above our shoulders work... didn't he?