The question of ‘identity’ and ‘place’, and the interconnectedness between the two, is an important one for me. In my first assignment, I set out to create a moving image that depicted the relationship between ‘identity’ and ‘place’. However, the resulting film depicting a figure dressed in a blue jacket walking through a forest barely scraped the surface of what I had set out to do. So I thought I would follow up on some of the issues raised by my tutor in his feedback on Assignment 1.
In order to develop ‘a more focused, individual and potential meaningful conclusion’, my tutor suggested I explore and reflect upon ‘the cultural meanings that the forest might hold as well as the different ways that it has been dealt with by artists and filmmakers alike.’ Two things I had not considered when preparing for my first assignment.
‘If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the woods.’
(Russian proverb)
In many fairy tale and folklore narratives the forest is often dark and a source of evil. The dark forest is a place in which we must face up to our fears and conquer them. This representation tends to generate narratives in which the forest becomes an obstacle the protagonist must overcome in order to reach their goal. A location through which they must travel, often at a price.
The forest has a broad range of cultural meanings, from enchanted place, to sanctuary from civilization, to ‘expression of the mind’ (Mullins, 2017).
Some notable examples of the use of forests in literature include:
- Fairy tales – e.g. Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood
- Brothers Grimm
- Dante – Inferno
- Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene
- Tolkein – The Lord of the Rings
- P.D. James – Death Comes to Pemberley
- Tana French – In the Woods
As ‘enchanted place’ the forest occurs in folklore and modern fantasy, often portrayed as magical places unknown to characters and as places of transformation.
In fairy tales the forest is a magical realm and place of danger. German fairy tales in particular tend to take place in forests, such as Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin.
Forests are also found in mythology: in the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh; the Norse myth Myrkviðr (Mirkwood); and Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
Many trees have their own magic and myths associated with them. The image of the Tree of Life or World Tree occurs in European mythology, such as the tree Yggdrasil from Norse mythology. Seen as a link between heaven, the earth and the underworld, Yggdrasil features in the Icelandic Poetic Edda.
Some notable films using forests as the setting for their narratives include:
- Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) Directed by Werner Herzog – adrift on a raft in the Peruvian jungle, a band of conquistadors searching for El Dorado find the horror within themselves.
- Deliverance (1972) Directed by John Boorman – man against nature; a gruelling psychological journey into the unknown and potentially dangerous wilderness.
- Fitzcaraldo (1982) Directed by Werner Herzog – the folly of man against nature; a wilful obsessive who will stop at nothing to build an opera house in the Amazonian jungle.
- The Emerald Forest (1985) Directed by John Boorman – based on the true story of an American engineer’s obsessive search for his abducted son in the Amazon jungle; the conflict between the ecological ethic of an Amazonian tribe and the corporate interests of modern civilisation; ancient wisdom based on dream time versus the ravaging of the earth characteristic of modern progress.
- Medicine Man (1992) Directed by John McTiernan – an eccentric biochemist discovers a cure for cancer in the Amazonian rainforest; portrays the issue of deforestation.
- The Blair Witch Project (1999) Directed by Eduardo Sanchez & Daniel Myrick – a supernatural horror; a fictional legend shot in the style of a documentary.
- The Village (2004). Directed by M. Night Shyamalan – uses the dark forest symbolically.
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016) Directed by David Kerr – BBC adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.
- Embrace of the Serpent (2016) Directed by Ciro Guerra – a surreal parable told from the perspective of the last surviving member of an Amazonian tribe.
I think the Russian proverb ‘if you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the woods’ is a good place to start in my own exploration of the forest and its function in moving images. On one level it means exactly what it says: don’t go into places that you know will frighten you. However, I also think there is another, much deeper dimension to this proverb than that of a simple warning: the forest can also be an ‘expression of the mind’; the external manifestation of the character’s inner world. I particularly like the idea of connecting what we see on screen with what is going on inside the character’s mind.
In many films the forest is more that a setting, it is a metaphor for something darker and more complex than a landscape of trees. It’s a place in which characters must face up to their darkest fears and overcome them, whatever the odds.
From this standpoint, the forest as a place of labyrinthine complexity capable of confounding all who enter its realm could be seen as a place of darkness, disorientation and transformation.
All of this points to a forest that is very different to the one I portrayed in my first assignment film, which my tutor describes as ‘a very generic and placid version of the forest, a place that is easy to negotiate for a leisurely Sunday stroll.’ From a storytelling perspective, the forest has the potential to be so much more than this. So what I need to do now is look at some of the ways in which I could explore ways of using the darker side of the forest, in both storytelling and cinematic technique.
This follow-up research on the cultural meaning of forests has opened up new pathways into my exploration of ‘identity’ and ‘place’ within my own moving image practice. Especially in terms of how I use character and setting, which are inextricably bound together, as two intertwined elements of the same thing. For me, one way of looking at character and setting in a moving image is in terms of ‘figure’ and ‘place’, in which ‘place’ is the visual manifestation of the ‘figure’s’ inner world.
List of references
Mullins, C.V. (2017) ’12 Unforgettable Forests in Literature’ In: Electric Literature [website] At: https://electricliterature.com/12-unforgettable-forests-in-literature-393d8cd93b3a (Accessed on: 3 May 2017)
Porteous, A. (2002) The Forest in Folklore and Mythology New York: Dover Books