Chicken with Plums
Episode 001
In session with Jared DeFife, PhD
Featuring Concertmaster violinist, David Coucheron
With your host, Gene Kansas
Chicken with Plums is a French film, made in Germany, set in 1958 Tehran. It’s beautiful, sad, funny, lonely, real. It’s about life, death, and love.
Sony Pictures Classics’ Chicken with Plums, is a 2011 French drama, directed by Marjane Satrapi (who’s great, great grandfather was the last Emperor of Persia) and Vincent Parronaud, the dynamic artists and filmmakers who took home the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007 with their internationally acclaimed Persepolis. Satrapi and Parronaud magically orchestrate a story of broken love as told through the swan song of Nasser Ali Kahn, one of the world’s best violin players. The film starts with Nasser Ali’s wife smashing his prize violin, making it impossible for him to ever play – or love – again, or so we think. In absolute despair, Nasser Ali recedes to his room to die. He does so 8 days later, and through his death we learn about life.
For this session of POPCORN THERAPY, we have two very special guests in the studio. Violinist David Coucheron is the Concertmaster violin player with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Jared DeFife, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, former Harvard Medical School fellow, and a faculty professor at Emory University where he acts as Associate Director of the Laboratory of Personality and Psychopathology.
It seemed only fitting to have Mr. Coucheron, who plays a 1725 Stradivarius and is one of the world’s top violinists, join us to share his thoughts about the film through a musician’s eyes and ears. And, Mr. DeFife, no stranger to psychoanalysis, is also a logical guest to help dissect the hopeless Nasser Ali and his family.
So where does Chicken with Plums come in? Listen and see.
