Sisyphean vs. sisyphean (with lower case "s")

I stumbled this afternoon upon a really great internet site called MUBI.com. It’s a site that offers streamed access to a huge number of international films at the rate of one per day for a small monthly fee. It also offers a sort of chatroom for film buffs. The site is clearly managed by a knowledgeable film afficionado who has earned his chops by watching critically hundreds and hundreds of films. But, I’ve got a beef.

     I came to the site, because I was looking for information about a film in which a student has perceived a usage of the Sisyphus myth, and I went to see whether others have worked on this same premise. A three-year old thread on MUBI’s beta site brought me up short — again! — starring in the mirror at my uncommon approach to mythological usage.

     The reader(s) of Mythmatters know(s) that I am particular about what stands for mythological usage. I insist on a “verifiable” acknowledgement or overt reference to a myth within a work of art. I call this a “smoking gun” reference, that thing in the narrative that reveals the artist knows he’s dealing with the myth. While I sometimes perceive myself standing upon eroding sands when I take one stand or another, I generally maintain that if the artist wants me to think about a particular myth, there will be a give-away reference. If I have to work too hard to make the connection to the myth per se, then it seems highly likely that I’m inferring the myth more than the artist has implied it. If she wants me to think on it, she’ll tell me to.

     Martinus began a string on MUBI nearly three years ago with this invitation to his interlocutors thus:

I know, it’s a Sisyphean task in itself: trying to list every movie that has something in common with the myth of Sisyphus.
- useless struggles
- absurd situations without hope
- eternal return
- no escape possible
- pointless punishments
- an endless task
- a neverending story
This myth has many aspects. The more the movie has in common with the situation of Sisyphus, the higher I will rank it on the list, which you can watch here: http://mubi.com/lists/19451
You, fellow Sisyphean moviewatchers, can help to make this list endless.

I applaud Martinus’ attempt to gather a list such as this. Especially because I am working on a similar project regarding the Orpheus myth, I admire the MUBI bloggers’ response to the invitation. Yet, I object to the groundrules of this particular game. This is the territory where my academic stenosis occurs. For, I believe that the ground rules should be more limited, along such lines as: “If the film mentions Sisyphus in its title or in its narrative, it belongs to the Sisyphus tradition.” This is too big a net for catching the right kind of quarry.

     Allowing that filmmakers illustrate cinematic narratives with overt allusion to Sisyphus will draw attention to narratives that involve “useless struggles,” “endless tasks”, “neverending stories”, and so forth. A narrative, however, must not necessarily depend upon the overt expression of the Sisyphus myth per se to articulate those feelings of endless and absurd futility. Not all narratives about futility are Sisyphus narratives.    
     Martinus lists his number one Sisyphus film: Jankovics Marcell’s “Sisyphus” (1974), a stunningly poignant black-and-white animated short that is guaranteed to affect every consideration of Sisyphus in every beholder after one viewing. The film is called “Sisyphus”.

    Marcell depicts the grunting, screeching upward striving against gravity and friction of a human figure beneath a gigantic mass. It’s Sisyphus. And its creator titled it “Sisyphus”. 
    Martinus’ expansive qualifications of a sisyphaean film invite “every movie that has something in common with the myth of Sisyphus.” That’s provocative in its enormous expanse. And the net brings in dozens of recommendations which my narrow qualifications will never allow. Surely. Truth be told, I have not seen most of the films on the lists his readers submit; but, I think the net is cast so wide that the quality of the catch is suspect.

   I have seen Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day (1993) and consider it remarkable. The

Sisyphus? I doubt it.

prognosticator finds himself stuck in a universe of repetitive experience, where everyday is exactly the same until he chooses to improve himself and his neighbors. Martinus consider it to manifest “the Sisyphean hero struggling with his fate which he defies and accepts at the same time.” Having seen the film a few times — though never through the scrutiny of a Sisyphus-mythwatch — I dare say there is no overt allusion to the Sisyphus myth in the film. Although the many films offered up by Martinus and his bloggers will no doubt include some specimens which bear overt allusion to Sisyphus and his peculiar plight, I am not prepared to admit that Groundhog Day foregrounds an overt reference.  Sisyphus and Phil may struggle in similar manner, but Phil is not Sisyphus.

    I will gladly revise my view, if, in a subsequent viewing of Groundhog Day, I discover — or have pointed out to me — the detail that has eluded my notice to date. It will be, perhaps, a framed print of Sisyphus on the wall of the coffee shop where Phil learns to be friendly with Rita, or the French text Phil claims to have mastered is Camus' Mythe de Sisyphe: essai sur l'absurde, or a heretofore unnoticed revelation that "Needlenose" Ned Ryerson’s middle initial is “S” for Sisyphus. I’m happy to watch for such clues that would inform me that Ramis was aware of Sisyphus in the creation of his cinematic marvel.

    Yet, the listing of thirty-three other reputedly Sisyphean films offered by Martinus must include at least a few where Sisyphus really is implied. I doubt Vertigo will pass my threshold of acceptance. But, Sidney Lumet’s The Hill? Or The Last Year at Marienbad by Alain Resnais? Nolan’s Memento? Ars longa, vita brevis.

This rant is not intended to cast aspersions upon MUBI.com. Not in the slightest way. My purpose is to knock the dross off this idea of mine and see whether it glides.

— M

OGCMA0762Oedipus_Shelley: recommendation for a paper topic

Once-Banned Drama to Play on DeJong Stage

That Oedipus the King should have been banned from the English stage for practically a century seems stunning in our modern sensibility. Sophocles plunges his heroic investigator into revelations of incest and patricide. Sure. But, censored? For nearly a hundred years?

In 1905 Gilbert Murray, the great classical scholar, wrote to William Butler Yeats: “I am really distressed that the Censor objected to [Oedipus the King]. It ought to be played not perhaps at His Majesty’s [theatre] by Tree, but by Irving at the Lyceum, with a lecture before … and after. And a public dinner. With speeches. By Cabinet Ministers.”[1] That would really rub their noses in the mistake perpetuated over decades that had relegated the Sophoclean to silence.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had perpetrated the offense in 1818 with his burlesque satire of King George IV which he called Oedipus Tyrannus; or Swellfoot the Tyrant. This “highly altered version”, as McDonald characterizes it, bothered the Lord Chamberlain, and a period of censorship ensued. Highet sees the Swellfoot more as the brilliant Shelley’s “greatest failure … an attempt at an Aristophanic farce-comedy based on the scandalous affair of Queen Caroline.” Intriguing is the fact that Shelley’s play was published in London, but not until 1820. Shelley’s reception of classical literature ought to invite hearty scholarship in our day.

This looks like an interesting usage, one that will likely reward further research. I think that, because the author is a major figure in English literary history. Further, Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant offers

a)    an overt usage of a classical myth — so, I won’t have to work hard to prove THAT Shelley was using the myth consciously — and

b)   an apparent purpose, or narrative gain, for Shelley’s working with the myth — i.e. a gifted thinker’s likening a moment in contemporary cultural politics to one of classical antiquity’s most salient myths. Shelley’s usage effected plenty of scandalous discomfort.

How does the poet’s commentary on George IV and his queen gain by its being likened to the Oedipus story?

My plan for research, if I choose to investigate further involves first checking to see whether Reid’s OGCMA already references the work. Then I will look to see whether Reid offers any leads for further reading. After that, I will start reading around and hope soon to form a compelling thesis statement. Then I will read around further and try to muster evidence to prove the point articulated in my thesis.

OGCMA0756Oedipus_Shelley

   Reid offers these references for further reading:

·      An edition of Shelley’s poetry, where I might find a footnote or something of interest in an introductory essay: T. Hutchinson, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1932.

·      The promise of some analysis and explication awaits in this monograph (apparently) on the author and his work: T. Webb. Shelley: a voice not understood. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1976. — p. 201

·      Analytical treatment of the work’s place in the broader classical tradition: G. Highet. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman influences on western literature. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.  — p. 421 and 678 (fn. 44)

I would not limit my research to those items, but I would certainly start with them.

—

RTM

---

[1] Murray to Yeats, 27 January 1905 in Finneran et al. (1977), cited here from F. Macintosh, “Tragedy in Performance: nineteenth- and twentieth-century productions,” in Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. by P.E. Easterling (Cambridge UP 1997), p. 297.

Oedipus the King at Classical Greek Theatre Festival

Oedipus the King, produced by The Classical Greek Theatre Festival (Westminster College, Salt Lake City); performed Saturday 14 September, O.C. Tanner Theatre, Springdale, UT.

Circumstances found my wife and me in Southern Utah on Saturday morning, unable to see the annual CGTF production in any other scheduled performance but free to arrange for a visit to Springdale and the magnificent venue of the O.C. Tanner amphitheatre. As the morning unfolded, we found ourselves wondering why in the future we would ever choose to see a CGTF production in any

Classical Greek Theatre Festival 2013 

location but here. So marvelous — and marvelously used — was this venue.

Oedipus the King stands, in its 2013 CGTF manifestation, as a straightforward and accessible interpretation of the venerable Sophoclean mainstay. Staging, costuming, message are classical. Sandra Shotwell eschews devices that other directors sometimes employ to “update” the ancient text or make it speak to some overtly modern context. Credibility accrues, rather, as the Prof. Shotwell lets this mighty tragedy speak for itself 
 A lovely moment of exquisite staging, which will not be replicated in any other performance of the CGTF OT has Oedipus turn his back on the audience and shouts his genealogy into the soaring red rocks beyond stage. When the mantic void echoes his ancestors’ names back, the effect is poignant. The lines in question are 265 – 70:

“I fight in [Laius’] defence as for my father

and I shall try all means to take the murderer

of Laius the son of Labdacus

the son of Polydorus and before him

of Cadmus and before him of Agenor.

Those who do not obey me, may the Gods

grant no crops spring from the ground they plough nor children to their women!”

                      (David Grene, trans.) 

The intellectual impulse in Oedipus drives him toward assumption of the legitimate right to act in behalf of the murdered king. We know, if we care to explore the bloodlines of the Labdacids, that Oedipus is in very fact a direct descendant of Agenor. At line 268 of this play, the Sophoclean Oedipus is some thousand lines from full awareness. Inasmuch as Oedipus does not yet perceive that Agenor’s lineage is yet viable, this pledge to bring its exterminator to justice resonates irony. No response rises from the stage; it echoes, rather, back upon Oedipus from the majestic red cliffs that soar a thousand feet above the Tanner stage. The theatricality is magical.

Pity that spectators who view this production in a modern theatre, or even at others outdoor venues, will miss the spectacular device availed by the Virgin River’s handiwork in Zion Canyon. The morning sun’s rising over the Springdale audience’s right shoulders provides the actors with a focal point for addressing Apollo on a handful of occasions during the play. This is a turn-around from the gorgeous Red Butte Gardens stage, where the morning sun rises in the spectators’ eyes leaving the actors look into a publicum that is either blinded or holding their hands in front of their faces. One gathers that the Tanner open-air venue may perhaps be among the very best situated stages for any production of a Greek tragic play.

The CGTF OT achieves a definitive success through minimalist adherence to the Sophoclean text. Marianne McDonald’s English translation drives the play. In spite of some overtly awkward acting from some actors, the play works. Because Oedipus’ agones against Tiresias and against Creon preciptate so immediately into shouting matches — more quickly, I feel, than the textual script actually warrants — I came away with the feeling that the actors were directed into an interpretive oversimplification. True, Oedipus’ character did manifest rash outrage that fateful day at the junction when Laius went down. So, maybe the King ought to shout down his interlocutor at every first sign of resistance. Diminished nuance in this aspect of the director’s choices put me off. Only in one late flashing moment does this Oedipus exhibit that intellectual heroism Sophocles wanted Oedipus to possess. When examining the shepherd, Oedipus presses toward revelation that will illuminate the extent of his hamartia.

Jocasta plays her part, particularly when downstage, with gut wrenching intensity. Sophocles’ brilliant plot structure is adequately matched by this Jocasta’s response to the revelations and her anticipation of what is coming next. If you consider the human inclination to circumvent fate to be this play’s chief caution, you will appreciate the roll and performance of this lead character especially rewarding. The off-stage scream was unnecessary; for, on-stage the actress showed the turmoil crush the queen.

Costuming bows to the archaic. Each chorus member is robbed in earth-toned sackcloth and each leans upon a crook, which is used as a percussive tool from eisodos right through the entire play. There are no masks. When a new character is required by the text, a chorus member changes costume subtly and emerges to stand opposite Oedipus. Before the play has ended, each on of these players has taken a shot at Oedipus’ blind preference for human intellect over blind belief in mantike. The director’s clever circulation of faces deftly implicates the chorus in the disclosure of the play’s action while economizing the production’s cost. Stage properties are minimalist. The oboeist’s upholstered chair and a meagerly stylized skene are the only fixtures on the stage. The doorframe’s rhomboid geometry suggests that the entrances and exits from the House of Labdacus can never be squared with outright propriety.

The decision to include a gifted auletes — well, obeist — in the company is a major plus. CGTF productions have rarely, if ever, been so well endowed with such lovely musical accompaniment. The effect is unobtrusively essential. That feeling one often perceives in less subtle productions, some atonal accompaniment articulating the on-stage proceeding or other, is neither pursued nor inflicted upon this elegant production. One comes away from this production wishing that all Greek tragic performances could accomplish this production’s musical grace. The choral odes are chanted by a well rehearsed troupe, to be sure. The rhythmic effect of McDonald’s translation is less lyric, though, and will certainly seem “other” to most in the audience.

In all, again, the 2013 production of the CGTF Oedipus the King is well worth the ticket price. A pre-play lecture by the affable Professor James Svendsen really adds to the value. Now as adjunct professor at Westminster College after his distinguished career at the University of Utah, Prof. Svendsen continues as dramaturge for the CGTF and seems fit for another full run through the Greek tragic canon.

Looking forward with unaccustomed anticipation to 2014.


—  RTM

 

Clack's Diana now not so hard to get ... ?

E.J. Clark, "Diana"

Hunting for the nude Diana in London’s Green Park used to be harder than it is now. The refurbishment of the three-line Underground station there has relocated John Clack’s bronze Diana from its original seclusion in a lovely clearing approximately 300 yards west into, now, the park’s busiest corner on the verge of Piccadilly and adjacent to the Ritz. During my recent pilgrimage visit, scores of bustling passers-by disgorged from the Piccadilly and Victoria and the Jubilee Lines while I glimpsed the goddess perched high over their heads. The bronze dog with her is the key to understanding the sculpture.
    Nobody catches a glimpse of the divine huntress with impunity. Actaeon learned that lesson the hardest way possible. Metamorphosed by the enraged goddess into his own quarry, the stag Actaeon was ravaged by his own hunting dogs. This punishment was Actaeon’s just dessert for having stumbled upon Diana bathing naked among her nymphs. Stern retribution for a chance encounter. Was it accidental? Was it premeditated? The infamous execution, in Ovid’s telling, stirred Diana’s peers to dispute the harshness of her judgment.
   The modest goddess in typical iconography shows no more skin than a shapely lower leg. The mistress of the hunt must hike her skirt a bit to allow for swiftness and free movement. And artists from the archaic through the classical periods preserve the standard garb that covers the virginal goddess’ privacy as chastely as she would herself. A browse through the LIMC reveals nothing more than a shapely calf or an occasional thigh. Even the classical depictions of Actaeon’s indiscretion show Diana covering up and gazing sternly upon the unwitting victim. Not all modern depictions of the

von Gleichen, "Diana the Huntress"

hunting goddess adhere to this modest attire, of course. A 5-minute walk across Hyde Park Corner leads to another bronze, fully nude, Feodora von Gleichen’s Diana the Huntress. After Saint-Gaudens disrobed Diana so infamously as weathervane atop Madison Square Garden (1891, 1894), there was no getting her back under wraps. Yet, much as Manship's 1921 Diana, also Clack’s Diana's appearance in the altogether connects his Green Park bronze to the Actaeon myth.
   Clack’s Diana group depicts an energetic intensity as the goddess unleashes the hound’s pent up potential energy. The cord in the her right hand restrained til just now all that canine force that springs now up and away from the lunging dog; her left hand must have been holding the collar. The exquisite release creates a torque that from some angles just conceals the goddess’s nude torso. Her nudity is more conspicuous because that dog is springing free.
   The Constance Fund awarded its prize to James Clack for this sculpture in 1954. The bronze was made originally as a drinking fountain for dogs — presumably on leads — that would drink from the three receptacles at its base while on walks in Green Park. The mistress of wild animals, whom the Greeks identified as the potnia theron, offering refreshment to dogs in a metropolitan greenspace was to be right at home. For over half a century the dog fountain offered its mid-park watering hole at a place along the Piccadilly side of Green Park. Though centered in London’s megalopolis a clearing in its former greenspace was just remote enough that Clack’s Diana seemed to tempt only the infrequent humans who stumbled upon her there, midway between the Hard Rock Café and the throngs at Buckingham Palace. A chaste Olympian might be more likely be caught au naturale in a place like that. I like to think that Clack’s sculpture maximized the effect of its original location. Diana on a dog fountain. The relative seclusion of a spot in Green Park. An unwitting passerby. Divine retaliation answers the intruder.
   For the 2012 Olympics, the sculpture was reassigned to the busiest footpath within the park. Transferring Diana to the Green Park Station sort of ruins the artist’s original conceit. Even though the maps at the park’s main entrances still show Clack’s tripedal bronze where it stood since 1950’s, a wholly unmythological installation now functions as the Constance Fund's fountainhead: The Watering Holes drinking fountain by Robin Monotti Architects and Mark Titman has replaced Clack’s Diana. And over by the Tube station, Clack’s canine drinking fountains at Diana’s base will likely never serve thirsty dogs again. The bustle of passengers will now always violate that one-time isolation that disarmed (and disrobed) the wary goddess in the quieter copse where the unwary once might go to gaze upon her.
    So, don’t fail to be aware of Clack’s Diana. But … be careful that your gaze doesn’t offend the vengeful goddess.

OGCMA0232NOTArtemis_Clack, a mastery image
OGCMA0231Artemis_Manship
OGCMA0230Artemis_vonGleichen
OGCMA0229Artemis_Saint-Gaudens

Medea + Achilles: sometimes life imitates art

Achilles and Medea are married partners in the underworld realms of Elysium according to archaic Greek poets Ibycus and Simonides. This seems amazing to me. It's not exactly a match made in Heaven. But maybe it's not the marriage from Hell, either.

Pitt in Troy (2004) and Caldwell in Medea (1984).
She won one of her four Tony Awards for this compelling portrayal.

The Hellenistic scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica 4.805ff. preserves the attributed detail that were otherwise lost.

 ὅτι δὲ Ἀχιλλεὺς εἰς τὸ Ἠλύσιον πεδίον παραγενόμενος ἔγημε Μήδειαν πρῶτος Ἴβυκος εἴρηκε, μεθ᾿ ὃν Σιμωνίδης ["Ibycus and following him Simonides first said that Achilles reached the Plain of Elysium and took Medea to wife" Schol. in Ap. Rhod. 4.814-15a p. 293 Wendel = Ibyc. frg 291 Campbell and Simonid. fr. 558 Campbell]

This long forgotten pairing is not cataloged in Newman & Newman, Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology and shows up only in an occasional footnote.

Since Homer produced Achilles from the gloom for the interview with Odysseus, Achilles himself is no surprise inhabitant of any other poet's conception of the netherworld. But after what Medea did to her sons and her brother and her father... It's hard to fathom a worldview that puts her among the blessed company of Elysium. The only way I can reconcile this oddity is to figure that when Simonides and Ibycus wrote, Medea had not yet fallen into the disrepute she now so infamously shoulders.

Euripides may not have been the first mythographer to project Medea, the sorceress turned infanticide, in such appallingly terrible shades. His play of 431 BC that now narrates for the ages the activities of the world's most terrifying mother may have itself been a novelty. She may not always have been so despicable. Euripides may have bent public opinion against her.

Hesiod's Theogony seems to find something appealing about Medea, the slender-ankled (ἐύσφυρος, 960; no comment from West) daughter whom Idyia conceived of Aetes when she was "overpowered with longing by golden Aphrodite". Line Hesiod (ca. 725 BC) up beside Ibycus and Simonides as poets apparently attracted to Medea.

So, where does such a woman end up in the afterlife?
Everlasting marriage to Achilles seems pretty pleasant as a reward. Even if the Achilles role is not played by Brad Pitt, it would certainly seem that archaic poets' notion of Achilles was pretty positive. Yoking Medea to such a hero seems like a big positive.

When I was researching the perplexing details of Medea's eternal reward recently, I bumped into a real-life oddity. It turns out that two important Italian papyrologists named Medea Norsa and Achille Vogliano corresponded in the 1930's. My friend Francesca Longo Auricchio wrote a useful article documenting the correspondence in Papyrologica Miscellenea. Without suggesting that any amorous interaction existed between those two scholars, I do admit amusement over the literary potential.

Ovid's Heroides are literary fantasies that offer should-have-been correspondence between partners such as Dido and Aeneas or Acontius and Cydippe, a letter from Penelope to Odysseus or Sappho to Phaon. Invented correspondence between Medea and Achilles would have been a precious conceit by the Roman master of erotic poetry. Maybe the practical side of Ovid's realism intervened: Medea, after all, has got to be a neat generation older than Achilles. Achilles is the offspring of a union formed during the voyage of the Argo, when the ship and crew were on their way to Colchis. Medea is going to be at least 15 years older than Achilles. ... Details, details. Maybe somebody needs to write this poem: a pair of epistles ala Ovid's Heroides between Achilles and Medea.

Düsseldorpheus, 1585

Johann Wilhelm, the Duke of Jülich, Kleve and Berg married at Düsseldorf on 16 June 1585 the countess Markgräfin Jacobe von Baden. The celebration was epic. Well, mythological at least.

On the third day of the event, a huge artificial mountain with two peaks was constructed. Upon each peak a musician representing the mythological musicians Amphion and Orpheus sat, playing. Amphion had applied his musical gifts to the building of the legendary walls of Thebes, charming the walls into place with his music and never lifting a hand. (Ovid Met. 6.146-312; 'most postclassical treatments of [Amphion] in the arts celebrate the power of Amphion's music.' Reid. Cf. Hor. Ars 391ff. Orpheus and Amphion are the first poets to teach mankind.) Orpheus' representative at the Renaissance hochzeit played on the false hilltop among a throng of wild animals assembled for the show.

A woodcut published two years later in Cologne shows the scene.

The allegorical purpose of the scene had something to do with invoking the muses, "in the form of Orpheus and Amphion," as sponsors for the newlyweds. Guests were told by placards posted around the scene how the mythological allusions had anything to do with the wedding. I well might have needed some help in the explication, too!

Orpheus gets top billing in lots of weddings, especially after 1600, when the wedding of Maria de' Medici and Henry IV of France witnessed the premier of Peri's Euridice — a watershed event in the history of opera that joined the forces of Caccini and Rinuccini at Florence's Palazzo Pitti and that is still being talked about. Throughout the 17th Century, Orpheus charmed the nethergods into relinquishing Eurydice in no fewer than 30 operas premiered from Vienna to Wolfenbüttel and from London to Madrid.

And further, Vienna and Graz had witnessed a similar mise en scene in 1571, when an artificial hill was erected — apparently like a parade float, in today's conception, pulled by four white drafthorses — and upon this mobile hilltop sat Eurydice and Orpheus along with representations of the inhabitants of the Underworld who were charmed by Ovid's Orpheus (i.e. Ixion and Tityos, and Tantalus, etc.).

So, particularly in light of that precedent, it is especially remarkable to me that Orpheus is there at the Düsseldorf wedding at the dawn before the 17th Century singing an entirely different tune.

Near contemporaries include Edmund Spenser, whose Faerie Queen (1596) includes Orpheus' music calming strife among the Argonauts (FQ 4.2.1), likely a role similar to that conceived in the company of Amphion at Düsseldorf.

The mythological pastiche is nicely explicated and brilliantly contextualized by E.-B. Krems, "Das Drama des Sehens und der Musik: zur Darstellung des Orpheus-Mythos in bildender Kunst und Oper der frühen Neuzeit," Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 36 (2009) 269 - 300. I owe all my knowledge of the Düsseldorf Orpheus/Amphion to her article, pp. 269 - 71.

OGCMA0785NOTOrpheus_Düsseldorf

Orphic Finality: vous n'avez encore rien vu

A celebrated film maker of advanced years produces a film adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and observers quickly surmise that this is the director's "final film." How do they know that it's not merely the "most recent"? He's still working, after all.

OGCMA0797NOTOrpheusEurydice_Resnais

Alain Resnais' Vous N'avez Encore Rien Vu (2012 = You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet) adapts two Anouilh plays, particularly Eurydice. The film competed for but did not with the 2012 Cannes Palme d'Or, and will be released in American art-house theatres in June 2013. My friend Will Brockliss saw that it was showing at the University of Wisconsin student union and drew my attention to it. I hope to know more about it.

Leslie Nesselson's review at rogerebert.com insightfully scrutinizes the critics' hasty assignment of the term "final film" to Resnais' most recent narrative. She wryly notes that Resnais is working on his next film already. Though significantly advanced in years, Resnais may or may not have left his Orphic film as his last piece. If she's right, and Resnais produces something further beyond this Orpheus, then we won't ultimately be able to note how Orpheus narratives seem to cap artists' collected ouevres.

The imbd.com summary of Vous N'avez Encore Rien Vu:

From beyond the grave, celebrated playwright Antoine d'Anthac gathers together all his friends who have appeared over the years in his play "Eurydice." These actors watch a recording of the work performed by a young acting company, La Compagnie de la Colombe. Do love, life, death and love after death still have any place on a theater stage? It's up to them to decide. And the surprises have only just begun...

The fictious playwright in this premise clearly has that Orphic role of immortal artist. Presumably, in an autobiographical claim, Resnais is making himself an Orpheus. His use of the Eurydice myth is clearly a smoking-gun reference that pins the narrative to mythological shorthand. When I see the film, I'll be watching with great interest for value the new narrative can add to the familiar myth. Nesselson has convinced me that there's much about Resnais' allusiveness I will not be able to appreciate — like his intertextual references to his entire cinematic corpus. But I hope to be able to appreciate the director's adaptation of the myth itself.

This post is obviously a place-holder in which I hope merely to indicate awareness of a mythological narrative that seems likely to warrant further and deeper investigation. Comments are welcome.

M