Notes

Near the end of the silent era, a movie-house's brilliant piano player, known to all as "Gauguin," develops a deep depression from his nightly task of providing highly emotionally-charged yet ultimately meaningless and ephemeral scores to countless films. Pouring his heart and soul into themes and motifs in his scores that most of his audience will forget, and 99% of people will never hear in the first place.

Due to these thoughts, over the years, he has shifted from youthful and bristly to depressed and alcoholic - his scores slowly becoming more and more irreverent and mocking, deliberately mismatching tonal shifts and continuously missing his cues. His emotionally disconnected performances draw ire from the audience, yet greatly entertain the groups of drunken vagrants that patron the theater nightly to see his comedic timing.

After a particularly flippant performance, Gauguin’s boss, Mr. Albini, notices his declining output and pulls him aside. He threatens Gauguin with the prospect of losing his job if he doesn’t shape up. He tells him to go see this Hollywood therapist, Dr. Zulawski, a "therapist to the stars". He says he's a little bit unconventional but he always works wonders. Gauguin takes the doctor’s business card and heads home.

Gauguin visits Dr. Z and becomes acquainted with his eccentricities. For the first session, he pours Gauguin a large drink and imbibes heartily with him, learning in a friendly and causual way his psychology. Zulawski’s utter delight at having a "normal" patient, "a man with real life and real disease," after disparaging some previous vapid celebrity sessions, is apparent. Gaugin is relieved to find a friendly irreverence for the mundane in the doctor. Zulawski hangs on with "there might be one patient, however... ah, I shouldn't say."
Zulawski and Gauguin's issues are detailed, including Zulawski's own, the denial of his mother’s untimely death due to the absence of a proper goodbye, and Gauguin's disconnect with his family despite his intense love for them.
After the session, Zulawski rushes after Gauguin and hastily explains that he has an idea, that his son is shooting a film in town with the beautiful actress Lillian Gish, whom his son plans to marry, and that she has agreed to come in for sessions herself. Zulawski insists that "this will work" and just to trust him, which Gauguin does.
Lillian is attempting to get over issues stemming from her invalid father and the resentment she harbors for him. She lives her days as a lavish starlet, but at night she returns to her father’s darkened apartment. He is a dying man, unwilling to leave his apartment and the hoard of garbage he lords over. Nearly catatonic and deep in senility. Apathy has ruined her familial relations. She rarely feeds him. When she cleans him, she gags. She can't stand it. She resents him, staring at his gaping mouth and glazed over eyes. She does not weep. She has to leave the film set early to cook her father a roast duck dinner for the anniversary of his wedding day. His dementia is acting up and he won’t eat it and he thinks she is his dead wife. The food sits there and rots over the course of the film. Gish’s room has barred windows and is a vision of suicidal ideation. Pill bottles on the bed stand.
The next day, Gauguin goes in for his therapy session and Lillian Gish is sitting on the couch. Dr. Zulawski has convinced her that she will benefit from acting as Gauguin's mother during his therapy sessions, as a form of her own therapy. The sessions officially begin and produces immediate chemistry between the two, Lillian perfectly capturing the spirit and feeling of Gauguin's mother, and Gauguin able to work through his problems with her. They build a spirit of attraction for each other over the sessions.
Lillian senses that the sessions are helping Gauguin more than herself, and she protests to the doctor, claiming that his inclination to place her into a maternal role is emotionally limiting and betrays her position in life currently. Zulawski explains his reasoning for this, citing a Freudian need for gender roles in stable psychology, especially in her case where she needs to come to terms with her invalid father turning from a paternal role into a child-like son role, which is exactly the role that Gauguin is in. She refutes that idea, and cites the Doctor’s own insecurity in that Lillian is dating his son and that the Doctor needs her to be shaped into a maternal role through these sessions so that he can feel, by proxy, a connection and return to his own mother before his son marries, securing the idea that his son can move on from his own injured mother-complex by marrying Lillian. Lillian is full of life and able to provide, unlike the Doctor’s wife, who is injured and frustrated, giving up on life. They disagree on the matter, but Lillian trusts Zulawski and continues the sessions.
Lillian visits her father again. He is sunken, shriveled and nearly dead. Just staring at her as she says she's sorry, she's so sorry. He can't speak, he can't do anything but stare. He is surrounded by garbage. Neglected and cold. She lights a candle for him and leaves him to die.
Eventually, Gauguin is invited to the set of the younger Zulawski's film shoot to see Lillian. The film is an American adaptation of The Dying Swan by Bauer, starring Gish as the titular Swan and Zulawski himself as the death-obsessed artist. He becomes involved in a love triangle with the director and the actress.
The younger Zulawski, at home, is racked with the grief of possibly losing Lillian over "that alcoholic Gauguin", his movie financially falling apart from all the stalling and the confrontation that his ideas might be losing luster, coupled with his overbearing but loving mother losing her hand and being frustrated around the house. He is concerned with his mother’s comments about how mothers are portrayed in his films and that it's a reflection of the way that he sees her in real life, and Zulawski insistence on that not being the case, that his art stands alone from his real life experiences and that he relies on imagination. Once we get to the filming of Zulawski’s The Dying Swan, the mother character ends up being a direct reflection of his mother’s current state of being, even down to the hand missing.
Lillian and Gauguin both grow to realize that Dr. Zulawski, through this strange therapy, only intends to fix his own mother and father complexes, as he shapes them both into visions of his father and mother, righting his wrong in being withdrawn and wrapped up in books instead of making emotional connection with them before they died. They sympathetically let the doctor fulfill this vision, and it serves as a way to enrich their own goodbye when they have to leave. They are able to all say goodbye to each other, on multiple emotional levels.
Gaugin and Lillian are then allowed to experience Zulawski's "Vision for the Light and Soul" therapy, a synesthesia machine intending for the cleansing of one's soul. A small teacup of mushroom tea is consumed, and the patients placed into bed. Small refractory mirrors are placed above the eyelids, reflecting light and pictures onto the outside of the eyelid, stimulating thought. Halfway through the session, they hesitatingly hold hands and join into their trips together.
He begins to hear the first strains of a song... Lillian explains to him that she needs Andrzej, but that she is in love with both of them immensely. She knows that she will never meet somebody like Gauguin again, and that they will always exist in this state for a brief moment in time, and that brings them both deep comfort. They know that they will always meet each other again, floating through time in that bed, holding hands. They embrace and let each other go.
In a deep pit of bittersweet sadness, Gauguin sits on a bed and watches the light from a candle flicker onto the opaque walls of its jar, the multiple wicks creating a crossed shadow that looks at once like a moth dying in the flame and a ballerina dancer twirling on her feet. He begins to hear a song, stronger now...
The younger Zulawski is newly fulfilled, marrying Lillian, finishing his movie and providing to his mother the support she needs. The movie ends on Gaugin, in the movie house, playing a haunting score to Lillian’s death-dance in the final moments of The Dying Swan. His performance is remarkable, and his eyes well up with tears as the movie comes to an end.
Over the credits, Gauguin, in old age makeup and a Groucho Marx fake nose and glasses. He's on a talk show, doddering through an interview, long, slow answers, bumbling, trying to be funny. He's asked about his new wife, the young lady at his side (played by the same girl that played Gish but dressed up like a cheerleader), and he tries to deliver an old joke. "Before I met my wife, I'd always felt incomplete - but now...I'm...my wife, she completes me." he utterly screws it up in his confusion... The talk show host cuts in, quips: "Completes you? Yeah..you do seem quite unfinished." Huge laughter. "Yeah, well why don't you come on back when she's completed you, see if this goes a little smoother!" Huge laughter. Fade out.