Every now and then, I encounter a movie that has a powerful message, albeit an inadvertent one, which becomes its most conspicuous feature. The White Massai, based on an autobiographical novel of the same name, is one of those movies. I watched it as an interesting psychiatric case study of a woman with a severe personality disorder. As I watched the main protagonist's weird acts and her eventual detachment from reality, her problem dawned on me. She was suffering from one of the worst psychiatric disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Below, I will try to review the movie in light of this disorder.
Firstly, a few words about BPD. It's a critical psychological condition that significantly impairs one's sense of reality and social capabilities. The BPD sufferers frequently drift into irrationality. This behavioral pattern results from a severe psychic trauma in childhood and culminates in an infantile personality structure. Incongruous behaviors and delusions are the main characteristics, along with a constricted sense of reality and a regressive mental state in the face of vicissitudes of life. Furthermore, detachment from reality leads to an emotional immaturity, which, in turn, leads to impulse-ridden acts. Hence, they seek instant gratification of all needs, wants, and desires. They tend to take their frustrations out on other people, which prevents them from building healthy relationships. And this is why they almost always end up developing pathological relationships.
A person with BPD may seem at first sight as an ordinary individual, but it is an entirely spurious impression. And this is the case in The White Massai. At the beginning of the movie, Carola, the main protagonist, taking a vacation in Kenya with her boyfriend, abruptly falls in love with a tribal Masai warrior. Now, this is a typical BPD behavior: you recklessly disregard the realities of your circumstances and succumb to your childish impulses. Thus, Carola hastily leaves her boyfriend and begins flirting with the Masai warrior. If we are to believe her narration, this is just a case of love at first sight. She leaves her boyfriend, sending him back home, and plunges into her brand new life as the wife of a tribal warrior, giving birth to a baby girl in the process. But, in fact, what we see is a BPD sufferer at work. With her emotional instability and a distorted sense of reality, Carola discards her life, like a three-year-old child tossing a toy aside, and haphazardly reconstructs a new life (a tribal one!) for herself. Oh, and not only for herself but also for her new warrior husband! She somehow decides to open a grocery store in the village and begins teaching her warrior husband the rules of merchandising and the importance of money. As the husband fails to grasp these and makes no progress in his new job as a sales clerk, she gets frustrated with her warrior-turned-clerk husband and questions her relationship: is he a loving husband, or just a dominant one ignoring her wife's needs and wishes!
On top of that, Clara soon finds him to be a bitterly jealous man who, after seeing his wife chatting cheerfully with a male customer, loses his temper and goes berserk. He is obviously ignorant about the dynamics of modern love and gender equality! Maybe, his upbringing in a patriarchal tribe might have played a role in his jealousy and authoritative manner, who knows! But, for Clara, these are sure signs of a troubled relationship; she concludes that he is not the love of her life. As abruptly as her falling in love, she falls out of love, leaves her husband, and returns to her home country with her daughter. At the end of the movie, all we have is a clueless (ex-)warrior who has been a victim of a person with a severe psychological disorder.
The White Massai unwittingly portrays a remarkable case of BPD. The movie tries hard to show Clara as an exceptional individual who is emotionally adventurous and audacious. But it fails to convince us that this is just an unusual love story of an ambitious and self-assured woman. What seems at first as her fortitude is indeed her pathological narcissism, which is a distinctive trait in many BPD cases. We see how her truculent self-assertion, bred by her narcissism, destroys her relationship with her tribal husband. We see how her emotional immaturity, coupled with her constricted sense of reality, prevents her from feeling genuine affection. And most importantly, we see how her regressive mental state ruins the lives of others.
The White Massai is a testimony to the viciousness of BPD. It tells the tragic story of a BPD sufferer whose regressive and distorted selfhood leaves indelible marks on other people. Indeed, you can watch it as a cautionary tale about how severe psychological disorders, if untreated, will wreak havoc on many precious lives.
N.B.: Just for the record, there are several books that I can recommend to psychology enthusiasts who may be willing to get some detailed information on BPD. Both "Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism" and "Love Relations: Normality and Pathology", by Otto Kernberg, are must-reads in this field. I must admit that they are not easy to read at all. Still, they are outstanding books that will give valuable insights into the intricacies of BPD. Another good book on the subject is "Schema Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder" by Arnoud Arntz and Hannie van Genderen. As its name implies, it's written from a practical point of view and offers valuable information about an effective method for alleviating the problems caused by BPD. I can assure you that after reading these books, you will watch The White Massai with different eyes.
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