MYTHIC STORYTELLING AND CINEMA: Introduction

MYTHIC STORYTELLING AND CINEMA:

Introduction

What is mythic storytelling?

The Inklings have a very particular way of telling stories, which is quite unlike most of what we find in the modern age. People like Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams were telling stories in a very ancient way, in a very mythic way. They told stories that, like the great myths of old, intended to rebuild the bridge between man and the Divine. In other words, their tales were meant to re-enchant the world of men by showing the transcendent character of reality.

But in modernity, this is not at all the intended effect of storytelling. Modern writers are often more preoccupied with navigating the shallow darkness of a character's ego than with connecting the life of that character to some transcendence. This is a great chasm that separates one form of storytelling from the other: one is more theocentric (centered on the transcendent and the Divine) while the other is more anthropocentric (centered on the human ego and the self).

Therefore, for a story to be considered part of the Inklings tradition, it is not enough for it to include fantastical and preternatural elements. These are only superficial elements to the tradition. What is more important is that, through these elements, it manages to re-establish a relationship between man and the spiritual, transcendent realm.

So with all this said, how can cinema manifest this ancient, mythic form of storytelling that the Inklings were so fond of? Is it even possible for film, an auido-visual medium, to tell mythic stories? These are the questions that I shall attempt to answer in the following series of articles.

Can film do it?

The first question we might be troubled with when trying to solve these dilemmas is whether an audio-visual medium like film can, in principle, effectively communicate the essence of mythic storytelling. After all, myths and fairy tales have been traditionally expressed in oral and written forms, and there is certainly a reason for that: when telling a story in an oral and written way, the imagination is most free to play. If all you have are spoken or written words, then you can engage with the ideas that those words symbolize, and imagine them in whatever way you see fit. Hence, there is a power to the oral and written forms of storytelling that myths and fairy tales can take great advantage of.

Nevertheless, the history of art does show that, while myths and fairy tales have often had their origins in oral and written forms, it is not rare to express these mythic stories in other mediums. In the case of myth, one could point to the theater of the ancient Greeks, where myths were told in dramatic form. Likewise, one could also highlight the many examples of visual art made during antiquity and the middle ages to illustrate the stories of the great mythic heroes of old. Wagner's work (not just his adaptation of the Nibelung, but also operas like Percival and alike) is similar in this respect, except that instead of expressing myths in visual ways, he does it mostly in musical form. And in the case of fairy stories, one could remark about the great illustrators and engravers of the 19th century such as Arthur Gaskin and Gustave Doré. Thus, we see how even in mediums like painting, sculpture, illustration, music, and drama, mythic storytelling can be present.

That said, it is true that, in spite of being able to manifest myths and fairy tales in powerful ways, these mediums do lack the imaginative potency that oral and written forms of storytelling have. This is not something that can be ignored, and the responsible artist should be aware of it. The potential to use the imagination in these mediums is much more limited and restrained, and this is something that even Tolkien remarked in his essay On Fairy Stories when he criticized theater adaptations of fairy tales.

Still, although their effectiveness may be lesser, visual, musical, and dramatic mediums still have the capacity to communicate myths and fairy tales. Curiously enough, film is precisely a hybrid art form of all these mediums. It is a combination of the acting and scripting of drama, the melodies and harmonies of music, and the images and designs of the visual arts. Therefore, if it is possible to express mythic stories in all three of these afore-mentioned mediums, then it should be also possible to express them in the hybrid art form of cinema.

How can film do it?

Now that we have resolved the issue of whether or not it is possible to create films that tell mythic stories properly, let us examine how this is exactly accomplished. For this purpose, we shall look at how each of the three mediums I mentioned before (drama, visual arts, and music) has historically represented myth and fairy tales, and then we shall see how this can aid in sub-creating a complete representation of mythic storytelling in cinema.

First, let us look at drama. In our analysis, we will mainly examine the dimension of drama that deals with the script and not so much with the acting, given that the script is often more fundamental to the work of art. A good way in which scripts can properly tell mythic stories is by placing a lot of emphasis on how the spiritual and the theological affects the plot of the story. This was done par excellence by the ancient Greeks when they adapted their myths to the theatre. For example, in Sophocles' Oedipus King, when Oedipus realizes that he has committed a series of gravely immoral actions, it is stressed that this event is the consequence of Oedipus' arrogance towards the gods. Likewise, in Antigone, another play by Sophocles, when Antigone decides to defy the decrees of her uncle the king and give her late brother a proper ritual burial, it is also made clear how this decision relates back to her family's relationship with the gods. Admittedly, if one has read these plays, he will know that the first example is more explicit than the second, but both of these cases are valid illustrations of how the spiritual realm can become present in the script. 

Secondly, there are the visual arts. Here, I could mention three principles. The first is an intent by the artist to distinguish in his visual depictions the spiritual from the worldly. That is, he will not illustrate a saint like Saint Mark or semi-Divine hero like Hercules in the same manner he will design a peasant or a common soldier. Saints will often have their iconic halos or some visual variation of the same (such as light radiating from them), and heroes will have body figures that are exaggeratedly strong and imposing. This is unlike the representations of common men and women, who have not yet been touched by the Divine in the story. The second principle is that the visual artists also put a lot of attention in making it visually clear what the relationship of a given thing is with the Divine. So if a forest is cursed, the forest will appear twisted, dying, and evil. Likewise, if a character is blessed, he will look fair, healthy, and heavenly. And lastly, there is also a lot of preoccupation with trying to highlight the spiritual nature of a creature whenever that creature has some special relationship to the spiritual realm. So if in an illustration of a fairy tale, a grey wolf is a symbol for the spiritual, that wolf will not look like any "realistic, normal" wolf; rather, his features will be exaggerated so that it is made clear that this creature is not of this world but of the next. Thus, the visual artists (whether they be the Greek and Roman sculptors, the medieval painters of manuscripts, or the 19th-century illustrators of fairy tales) can tell mythic stories through their mediums.

Thirdly, we have music. Music has one principal way in which it can manifest the presence of the spiritual in its art, which is by the use of what is often called a leitmotif. Leitmotifs are simply musical themes that accompany a certain moment, character, or place from the story that the music is telling. The most famous example of leit motifs is that of Wagner and his Ring Cycle. Each element of his adaptation of the myth of the Ring has a specific theme that accompanies it throughout the play. But even in something so solemn and so sacred as the Liturgy of the Holy Mass can leitmotifs be found. In the Latin Rite, each moment of the Holy Mass (whether it be the Kyrie, the Gloria, or the Agnus Dei) has a musical theme, a specific chant, that follows it. So when the musician wants to highlight some spiritual aspect of the story, he can resort to the use of leitmotifs to do it. Thus can musical themes be used to highlight the presence of some spiritual or Divine element.

The Mythic in Film:

Being a combination of drama, visual arts, and music, cinema can combine all three of these sorts of techniques to produce a cinematic story that manifests the mythic in powerful ways. By making the relationship between the Divine and the human the guiding light of the script, the plot, the theme, and the characters of the story are all infused with a spiritual dimension that transcends them and gives them a proper mythical trademark. Then, by using all the various visual techniques to distinguish and highlight the presence of the Divine and its relationship to the elements of the story, everything the audience sees will have a deep spiritual significance to it. And likewise, by using leitmotifs to heighten the spiritual elements of the story, the music will also give new layers of theological and metaphysical meaning to what happens in the film. That is how cinema can communicate mythical storytelling.