Mahler auf der Couch (2010)

In the summer of 1910, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud cuts short his vacation in Sicily because the composer Gustav Mahler asks him for help with marital problems. Mahler himself still has some last-minute reservations about the session, since he believes his marriage is happy, but he eventually confides to Dr. Freud that his wife Alma, nineteen years his junior, has been unfaithful to him. Mahler’s accounts during the therapy that follows are supplemented by statements from people in the Mahlers’ circle. In a flashback, Mahler tells how he visited Alma at the sanatorium where she was staying for a cure. When she introduces him to the architect Walter Gropius, he initially suspects nothing; Mahler learns of Alma’s affair with Gropius only when he reads a love letter from Gropius to Alma that was accidentally addressed to him. Gropius urges Mahler to set Alma free, as she deserves a life appropriate to her age; Alma herself, however, does not feel able to leave Mahler and asks Gropius to wait for her. When Freud confronts Mahler with the question of whether he himself might be to blame for Alma’s affair, Mahler tells Freud at their next session how he and Alma met. Despite the reservations of those around her about her marrying a much older man, Alma wants to marry the composer. Shortly after their engagement, Alma is devastated when Mahler demands that she stop composing and cater to his needs, but she gives in. Alma soon becomes pregnant and gives birth to their daughter Maria Anna, known as “Putzi”; the birth of their second daughter, Anna Justine, known as “Gucki,” follows soon after. A turning point comes in 1907, when Mahler’s tenure as director of the Vienna State Opera ends and the family moves to America. The family suffers a devastating blow when their daughter Maria Anna dies of scarlet fever. Freud draws from Mahler’s subconscious Alma’s reaction to Mahler’s discovery of the love letter: Alma tells Mahler that she is no longer willing to subordinate her needs to him and that she wants to leave him. At the end, Alma says that she wants to grow through Mahler and asks him to forgive her. At the end of the therapy, Freud explains that Alma’s affair was necessary to open Mahler’s eyes. A little later, Mahler achieves a triumphant success with his Eighth Symphony; Sigmund Freud and Walter Gropius are also present at the premiere. Mahler dedicates the “Eighth” to his wife Alma and advocates for the publication of her compositions. Shortly afterward, Mahler, already marked by his illness, travels with Alma to America and dies in 1911 after returning to Vienna because of his illness.