Feeding our spirituality with fantasy films
“The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.”
That quote by Marion Woodman, a mythopoetic author and Jungian analyst, is from the page Spirituality.
One of the reasons films like “The Golden Compass,” “Beowulf,” the “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” films, and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” can be so emotionally resonant and powerful is they effectively tap into spiritual, as well as political issues.
Quoted in the article Fantasy films? There’s truth in there too, by Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times Dec 10, 2007, “Golden Compass” writer-director Chris Weitz, who adapted the film’s screenplay from Philip Pullman’s novel, said “One’s always tempted to go the rather stock route of saying it’s escapist fare, and we really need that now.
“But if you look at ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘His Dark Materials,’ they’re not really escapist inasmuch as they deal, at least in analogy, with some of the things that are going on in politics and society.”
Guillermo del Toro, writer and director of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” says fantasy films are inextricably bound up with spiritual issues, no matter how hard filmmakers may try to submerge them. “In the same way that no movie can be nonpolitical, these genre movies cannot avoid being somewhat spiritual. They can be a crass, failed exercise in spirituality. But no matter how much they try to avoid it, they are tackling subjects . . . rooted in spirituality.”
The article adds, In a world dominated by rationality, Del Toro sees fantasy as the last refuge of the unknown, a place to address questions that still elude science.
“The more we get technology into our lives and the more we demystify our beliefs, the more we create a void,” he says. “As spiritual entities, we need to fill that with something, with some mythology or cosmology that allows you to believe in something beyond your next cellphone bill. . . . and the latest Nintendo game.
“I think that movies of the genre do that. They make the supernatural or the magical palatable to the supposedly jaded ‘here, now’ generation.”
[Related post: Guillermo del Toro on the power of fairytales.]
Related page: Myth & story - on which is a quote by Thomas Moore: “The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought. … We have yet to learn that we can’t survive without enchantment and that the loss of it is killing us.”
December 17th, 2007 at 10:24 am
That which succeeds in getting past prejudice, tradition, control and political power to deliver a truth to the soul; that is art.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:16 am
I myself am a huge fan of fantasy films. Not all films give out the same message to every person. Personally, fantasy films allow my mind to reflect on the bigger things of this world. It allows me to see certain issues in a light I have never even considered.
December 20th, 2007 at 5:42 am
The entire genre of science fiction and fantasy has always been a favorite of mind but I’m not sure it is due to a connection with underlying threads of spirituality. Let me suggest instead it has to do with my tolerance for being controled juxtaposed to my own desire to exert control on my environment. It seems the theater which most resonates within me are in those two polar areas. Either throwing off unjust control such as Star Wars or Braveheart. Or the need to exert control over chaotic existance as in The Perfect Storm or Jurasic Park.
They all have to due with the human underlying need to exert and tolerate control.