Elizabeth Sankey’s acclaimed 2020 documentary Romantic Comedy married familiar genre clips and a rigorous academic appraisal that allowed for reclaiming When Harry Met Sally and The Holiday while questioning how such romantic fantasies might impose on real life.
With Witches the film-maker turns toward another set of cinematic archetypes and tropes: the broomstick-wielding, occult-adjacent women of the title. A welcome gallimaufry of familiar visual cues – The Wizard of Oz, Practical Magic and The Craft – ushers in questions about women, mental health and motherhood.
The movieverse provides a springboard for Sankey to discuss her own harrowing experiences with post-partum psychosis. During the pandemic, she and her infant son were admitted to a psychiatric ward. Brave does not begin to cover her testimony. She found support with Motherly Love, a WhatsApp group of mums who experienced various post-partum mental illnesses.
These women and other experts provide voracious, bruising accounts. David Emson, the only man in the documentary, recounts the day he found his wife, who died by suicide after killing her infant daughter, Freya, in 2001. Catherine Cho, author of the post-partum psychosis chronicle Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness, recalls seeing demons everywhere.
Witches: A pioneering investigation of post-partum psychosis
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Sankey carefully consults historical records of the witch trials. Several accounts suggest that women preferred to confess to witchcraft and burn at the stake to evade the mental-health issues that followed childbirth.
It’s a fascinating hypothesis and hugely important topic that even the brilliant Sankey can’t quite align with the film’s pop-cultural preoccupations. Both strands deserve their own Elizabeth Sankey film. She has an intriguing thesis on such movies as Girl, Interrupted and Rosemary’s Baby, but these concerns are overwhelmed by her groundbreaking investigation of post-partum psychosis. The results are uneven yet pioneering and important.
On Mubi from Friday, November 22nd
