Monday, October 17, 2011
Illumination
So in greek class we just watched a movie, "Orphee"("Orphee" is a 1950 french film adaption by Jean Cocteau of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) , which was all about defining a poet and it reminded me a lot of Foer and what we talk about in class. One of the main things we talked about was the significance of light and dark and how poets need to know or illuminate things. This reminded me so much of Everything is Illuminated and mainly Alex because, like a poet, is always asking questions and throughout the book is on a quest for the truth. Also in the movie is a display of what people will sacrafice for loved ones like how the say "everything for Igor". Finally mirrors are also a motif in the movie, too. Overall, there are some interesting parallels between "Orphee" and Everything is Illuminated and I would recommend anyone watch the movie.
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Just as an added note, light equals knowledge and dark equals ignorance or anger. In Orphee, the titular charachter is actually a bit TOO obssessed with the unknown, so much so that he keeps chasing down his DEATH. This of course, leads to Eurydice, his wife, dying due to his ignoring her and her needs (well, sorta). Then he goes into Death, finds out his Death loves him adn essenially leaves his wife for her....while Eurydice hooks up with Hermes. And THEN his Death reverses time so that he doesn't remember her so that he and Eurydice cna live happily ever after adn have kids.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, Death's outfit changes form black (doing Death work) to white (emoitional and loving), but also for almost no reason at all. For example, when she watches Orphee sleep (TWILIGHT) she's wearing a white wrap around but her eyes are almost completely black.
Last note; in Japan and China white equals death, which is why they wear red or plae green to weddings adn white to funerals.