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In the Future You Will See is a useful model for a themed set of reconstructions involving participation of local people in urban/rural interfaces and 'natural' landscapes. Myths & Movies - selected references for reconstructions :  | The Eye of the Needle
Richard Marquand directed this 1981 film from the best-selling novel by Ken Follett. This WWII set thriller centers on a relationship between German master spy 'The Needle' (Donald Sutherland) and a brave, emotionally starved woman (Kate Nelligan), with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. The last scene when The Needle attempts to make his getaway is brilliant. "who'd have thought the war would come down to just the two of us." |  | Chief's 'funeral' - Apocalypse Now 1979. Chief, commander of the boat taking Captain Willard up-river in search of renegade Colonel Kurtz, was killed by a spear in the previous scene. Immersed in The Mekong, crew-member Lance sings a mournful lament while cradling Chief's body before letting it sink beneath the murky water. The tone of this scene has stayed with me. I showed it to the pyrotechnic SFX operators as an atmospheric reference for 'Voyage into the Unkown 1'. Despite being a funeral ritual, it connects with my interest in the meaning and imagery of baptisms and pietas.
|  | The Lady of Shalot was forbidden to look directly at reality or the outside world; instead she was doomed to view the world through a mirror, and weave what she saw into tapestry. Her despair was heightened when she saw loving couples entwined in the far distance. In Tennyson's poem, imprisoned in a tower on an island, 'half sick of shadows' , yearning for real experience, she dreams of her own 'loyal knight'. When the shining image of Lancelot appears in her mirror, she escapes by boat during an autumn storm, but realises she has doomed herself by leaving her enclosure. As she drifts towards Camelot and certain death, she sings a lament. Click these links for a close reading of the poem's complex and polyvalent symbolism. |  | On the banks of the river of the underworld, she rakes up first Lemminkäinen's tunic and shoes, and then, his maimed and broken body. Unrelenting, she continues her work until every piece of Lemminkäinen's body is recovered. Sewing the parts together and offering prayers to the gods, the mother tries to restore Lemminkäinen to life.
|  | The Isle is a film by South Korean Director Kim Ki Duk which is both admired and reviled for it's marriage of beautiful cinematography and graphic violence. "Who is this mysterious woman? — she's the spirit of this otherworldly place, both benevolent and vengeful. We feel her presence everywhere, seeing all, protecting her guests and punishing their trespasses." read a review by a critic who loved the movie despite it making him physically ill. |  | Hylas and the Nymphs. In the Greek myth, Hylas is taken by nymphs while taking water from a spring. This myth resembles others from Greece, in which the goddess as siren, either in the form of bird-women singing from an island shore; or as fishwomen in the waves, lures young men to their doom. In each of the myths, there is the suggestion that the seduced victim went willingly, blissfully, to his destruction. Waterhouse uses an Irish version of the myth which associates the goddess with watery fens; pools and bogs. This myth can be given a more grisly interpretation than was given by the Pre-Raphaelites - across Celtic Europe, the bodies of apparently ritually-sacrificed men have been found preserved since antiquity by bog waters. Whether in Britain or Scandinavia, the binding (five-fold bond) and the three-fold manner of death (strangulation; throatcutting and drowning), as well as the place, a watery wild, seem to indicate that the men were (perhaps willing) offerings to the goddess, in a Celtic version of the Mediterranean rite in the grove. |  | Decapitated head of Orpheus singing as it floats. One night, Orpheus (one of the chief poets and musicians of antiquity, and the inventor or perfector of the lyre), happens upon the sacred grove, where the baccantes are conducting their secret rite. Orpheus is discovered and torn to pieces. The end of the story as depicted by Waterhouse, has Orpheus' severed head, still singing of his love for Eurydice, being washed ashore on Lesbos. This myth disguises the actual rite conducted annually in ancient times. I find the idea and image of Orpheus' decapitated head drifting on the tide, still singing laments for his lost love (accompanied by his lyre), very powerful. Orpheus opens a portal to Goddess worship and journeys to the underworld. | |  | Isle of the Dead Arnold Böcklin produced several different versions of the painting. All depict an oarsman and a standing white-clad figure in a small boat crossing an expanse of dark water towards a rocky island. In the boat is an object usually taken to be a coffin. The white-clad figure is often taken to be Charon, and the water analogous to the Acheron. |  | Ophelia is a Shakespearean character said by some to represent the goddess, and whose watery suicide symbolises a lament for the lost goddess. Ophelia paintings might therefore be called Death of Venus paintings. Elaine Showalter offers a survey of feminist approaches to the questions that the character and her history in performance and criticism raise. There is "no 'true' Ophelia" of whom a feminist critic might speak, she argues, only "a Cubist Ophelia of multiple perspectives".
. . . the topos of the underwater woman as a sign of social oppression and release (even if to death) from Helen of Troy to Sylvia Plath. |  | Naiads (from Greek "to flow," and "running water") were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as river gods embodied rivers, and some very ancient spirits inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes. Naiads were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater and the Nereids specifically with the Mediterranean. | | | |
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