CINEMAGNIFICENT

The Passion of Martin Scorsese

2011-04-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

I originally sat down to write an article on The Last Temptation of Christ in celebration of Easter. But then it occurred to me to discuss instead one of the themes of my book The Passion of Martin Scorsese : so many of Scorsese's films contain deep and significant references to The Passion of Christ, Easter Week, and the Easter Triduum.

The traditional three days of the Triduum are: the Last Supper on Thursday night, the arrest of Christ at Gethsemane Friday morning, the Stations of the Cross* on Friday and Saturday, and the Resurrection on Sunday.

In The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese takes us through Thursday and Friday, and then - like Nikos Kazantzakis's book on which the film is based - he inserts the famous dream sequence in which Christ is tempted by Satan to step down from the cross and live an ordinary human life. He only realizes the gravity of his mistake when Judas challenges him on his deathbed. Christ is returned to the cross and the words "It is accomplished" make all the sense in the world.

But consider also the basic structure of Bringing Out the Dead: it takes place over 56 hours - a “weekend of full moons” - during which we share Frank’s pain and disintegration. The time span corresponds to the Easter Triduum - the three days of the Passion, Cruciﬁxion and Resurrection - as well as to the period during which Dante traveled through the realms of the dead on his journey to the other side of the night, symbolized by the sun behind the mountain.

Shutter Island likewise contains fascinating references to Passion Week. The main mystery of the film, of course, is the question: "Who is 67?" My very first gut response to that question the first time I heard it was this:
The digit sum of 67 is 13, and 13 is a number that is symbolically connected with Jesus (there were 13 people present at the Last Supper; the 12 disciples and Jesus) or occasionally with Judas (the outsider of the 13). By the end of Shutter Island, we know for sure that Teddy Daniels is really Andrew Laeddis, and we know for sure that Andrew Laeddis is patient number 67. Thus we could make an argument that Teddy Daniels = Andrew Laeddis = 67 = 13 = Christ (Judas).

In that sense, Shutter Island also becomes a Passion Play, a twisted, inverted version of the ﬁrst part of Passion Week. The ﬁnal scene, in which Teddy is sitting on the stairs with Chuck waiting for the doctors to come get him, calls to mind a number of Renaissance paintings of Christ waiting in Gethsemane in the early morning for the soldiers to come and arrest him; one of the most stunning of these being Andrea Mantegna’s “Agony in the Garden” (which you can see above).** The cruciﬁxion that awaits Teddy/Laeddis is, of course, the transorbital lobotomy.

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*The traditional Stations of the Cross are …
Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus is given his cross
Jesus falls the first time
Jesus meets His Mother
Simon of Cyrene carries the cross
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Jesus falls the second time
Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
Jesus falls the third time
Jesus is stripped of His garments
Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus' body is removed from the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense.

** Mantegna's "Agony in the Garden" is exhibited at The National Gallery in London.

Why Can Scorsese's Films Change Your Life?

2009-09-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

"The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face." (Carl G. Jung)

In Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious Carl Jung explains the difference between the persona and the shadow. The persona consists of the masks we wear and hide behind. In order to protect our ego we create these outer layers of identity. The shadow on the other hand consists of the parts of us we have disowned and do not want to acknowledge or own up. The sides we perceive as too painful, too embarrassing, too evil, too unacceptable to our surroundings. But these parts still exist inside us and often the shadow contains the very worst sides of us as well as the most luminous sides of us. The shadow always holds a truth that our ego needs to hear.

The thicker the mask, the false self, the more internecine becomes the battle between the persona and the shadow. Because the shadow (like all repressed, unconscious sides of us) will always insist on being heard, and the more we deny it, the more we suppress it, the more force it accumulates. As Alex, the Glenn Closes character in Fatal Attraction, puts it: "I will not be ignored, Dan!"

The mirror does not flatter, says Jung, and the shadow is the face we cover with the mask because we does not want the world to see it. But the shadow shows our true face.

In movies we often see this battle between the mask and the mirror, the persona and the shadow, and it is of course a reflection of a battle that is constantly taking place deep inside us all.

We see this battle in the majority of the films of Martin Scorsese. In Casino for instance Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) spends most of his energy trying to keep the outer facade intact so that no one can see the boy from the streets that he used to be. Like in fairy tales, the persona is symbolized by the outer garments, and Ace's attire is so immaculate that it becomes involuntarily comical. But the more he tries to cover his true face with expensive, elegant designer clothes, the more unruly becomes his friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci). Nicky becomes the personification of Ace's shadow, and the two of them are inextricably connected: "Every time they mention my name in the papers, they mention Nicky too," Ace says mystified.

The battle between these two men becomes a battle to the death. When the film is over, Nicky is dead while Ace is still alive, but the very last we hear of Nicky is, that he was still breathing when they buried him. We may try to get rid of our shadow with all our might, but it is to no avail: we will never, ever get rid of it. And what we can't be with, won't let us be! As Debbie Ford always says, "What we resist, persists!"

People often complain that Scorsese's films are violent, but this is small wonder, since they reflect an extremely brutal battle inside each and every one of us. I absolutely believe that we can use Scorsese's films to significantly improve our lives, if we truly listen to what Scorsese is telling us, if we can find the courage to own up to the fact that the darkness is inside me too. Because we cannot truly own our light if we do not have the courage to go through our darkness to find it.

© Catharsis Copenhagen, Annette Wernblad. All rights reserved.

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The Quest for the Holy Grail

2009-03-14T06:07:00.000-07:00

In 1949 renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell published his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In this groundbreaking work he introduced what he calls the Hero's Journey or the monomyth. He argued that the same fundamental story - the story of the mythological hero's journey - forms the heart of all the great tales in all cultures through the ages: fairy tales,
myths, scriptures, and movies.

The hero's journey is a microcosmic version of the journey we all have to go through in our lives, and therefore the great stories can teach us crucial things about ourselves, our world and our journey through life.

In essence the basic Hero's Journey looks like this:

* We meet the hero in his/her ordinary world before the change
* The hero is presented with the call to adventure - a problem, a challenge - and can no longer stay in the ordinary world
* The hero tries to refuse the call out of fear for the unknown, but ....
* Meeting the mentor - a Merlin figure - gives him/her the courage to take on the call and its consequences. Often the mentor gives the hero a piece of advice or an object which will facilitate the journey
* The first threshold is crossed and the hero enters the unfamiliar world where he/she is subjected to trials and tribulations and meets allies and enemies
* Finally the hero comes to the threshold of the terrifying place - theinmost cave - where the true goal of his/her journey lies. Now he must face whatever he fears the most, look death in the eye and go through the ultimate trial which the journey has prepared him for
* If the hero overcomes the challenge, he may grab the reward - themagical object, the Holy Grail, the Philosopher's Stone - and begin his homeward journey with the reward

This narrative structure is reminiscent of the dramatic structure we find in most movies, but it goes ever so much deeper. The mythological tale is older than the Pyramids. And it is indeed by means of the Hero's Journey and its archetypal implications that we can truly see how much film can teach us ... IF we make the effort and regard them consciously, that is.

Just consider this for a moment:

* How many stories can you think of that are based on this basic mythological model?
* How many books and movies concern an existential journey into the unknown?
* And finally: how much richer would your own life be if you made the conscious choice to see the challenges you are faced with from this perspective - as calls to adventure - rather than seeing them as annoyances and grievances?

Our ego is always terrified of change - that is built into the very structure of the ego - but our wiser Self insists on change, because it knows that only through change and challenges can we grow. Every time the call to adventure appears in our lives, our ego tries to avoid and ignore it. But if we choose instead to gratefully accept these apparently frightening challenges, our lives becomes so much richer, more joyful and more enlightened.

The reason for this is, that in the final analysis, the true goal of the hero's mythological journey is ALWAYS the same: through his trial by fire, through his meeting with the dark night of the soul in the inmost cave, the hero is given the potential of becoming a bigger, better, wiser human being.

Over the past decades I have taught countless courses and workshops on this topic - the hero's journey and film - and every single time it strikes me just HOW deeply it affects us when we make the hero's journey a conscious part of our lives.

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung famously said: "I would rather be whole than good!" The hero's journey presents us - the audience - with an opportunity to become a bigger, better, wiser, more whole human being. And that is regardless of whether the hero who undertakes the journey is Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Lara Croft, Indiana Jones or you!

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2008-07-06T12:37:00.000-07:00