Imagine that your wildest, most incredible, forbidden dream is possible. That nothing is impossible, no matter whether it is about something material or about subtle, ephemeral matters. What would you do to get what you want? And what would you be willing to give up in order to start living the life you want?
What are you willing to do to be beautiful? To save your own child? Spending the night with a cover girl? Heal your spouse? Hear the voice of God again? Get sight?
Let’s say that on one side of the scale is what you dream about more than anything in the world, what should radically change your life – and what are you ready to put on the other side? Are you capable of destroying someone else’s family for this? Do a robbery? Protect another? Hit? Kill?
These uncomfortable questions are asked by the protagonist of Paolo Genovese’s The Meeting Place, a feature-length adaptation of the TV series The Table in the Corner. He is a stranger in a cafe – either a psychotherapist, or a businessman, or the devil himself. His interlocutors (favorite Genovese actors, familiar to the viewer from “Perfect Strangers” and “The Perfect Family”) come to him when there is no other way out to make a deal. The stranger attentively listens to their stories, writes down something in a thick ledger and, having looked through the written pages, gives instructions. Strange, outrageous, scary – as lucky.
Again and again, interlocutors return to the stranger’s table with clarifying questions, progress reports, pleas and demands. Many break down, refuse the deal, but then come again.
Even if we leave everything as it is, then in this way we also choose not to choose
Performing or failing tasks, they think about the global, important, unsteady, fundamental, and these insights set a parallel with the process of psychotherapy. About what happiness is for them personally. About what they really want, how important it is to wrap desires in the clearest possible formulations. How their actions affect others.
Some suddenly realize that before that they acted on autopilot, others – that existence has finally found meaning. Still others – that living after what happened will be painful, unbearable. They come up with the most incredible excuses for their future actions. Something to mitigate future guilt. Performing the tasks of a stranger, the heroes discover a lot of new, often unpleasant things in themselves. It turns out that this can be done at any age.
And it turns out that in life there is always a choice. And even if we leave everything as it is, then in this way we also choose not to choose.
The stranger scrupulously writes down in the ledger the thoughts and feelings of the dumbfounded and lost interlocutors. Who is he, the man who brings our Shadows to light, highlighting what we would rather not know? Devil, monster? “Let’s put it this way: I feed the monsters.” Dealing with him is not the best idea, and yet toying with the idea of meeting someone who can grant any wish is quite tempting. What would you ask a stranger in the corner?