Unlike Athena, who emerged fully formed out of Zeus’s thigh, the quartet of “Girls” – chronologically young women but called by a more immature younger-female appellation – spent six seasons finding themselves. And the show’s creatrix, Lena Dunham, used the dyad signifying the archetypal Feminine – Moon and Venus – as their strategy for self-discovery. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Janis: Little Girl Blue’ (2015)
Amy Berg’s documentary about Janis Joplin, Janis: Little Girl Blue, doesn’t tell us whether the ‘60s R&B rocker was a serious student of astrology. But twice in the film Joplin notes she’s a Capricorn. Turns out the girl knew enough about her sun sign to aim high and not take no for an answer. However, […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Wonders’ (2015)
Wonder-inducing stuff – experiences, events and feelings – happens both externally, through our observations, and internally, through grace. In The Wonders, awe comes from both within and without. Written and directed by Alice Rohrwacher, the movie, set in rural Tuscany, centers on Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu), a pre-teen girl. She’s the oldest of four children […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Grandma’ (2015)
The grandparent-grandchild connection is invariably one that fuels hopes for the future, as age embraces optimistic and expansive youth. But the past is often a demanding guest in this generational interplay, generating a flood of memories of watershed moments in the older person. This phenomenon is at the core of Grandma, where an idiosyncratic and […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Inside Out’ (2015)
They say it takes a village to raise a child. Wait until you meet the community that’s helping grow Riley. In Peter Docter’s Pixar-animated Inside Out, pre-pubescent Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) has a parental unit (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). But in addition to Mom and Dad, there’s a cadre monitoring her interior well […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hungry Hearts’ (2015)
It’s fitting that the protagonists in Hungry Hearts meet neat in the bowels of a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. The bathroom door jams and the duo are literally trapped in an area the size of a closet. It’s a signal that plunging into the heart of this movie – food, one’s approach to it, the […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Brings On the Matriarchy and the Feminine (2015)
The great balancing act in Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t the circus-like, high-pole-dipping soldiers swooping down onto enemy vehicles like birds of prey, or the astounding center of gravity that keeps racing rigs and trucks from keeling over onto desert sands out of sheer momentum. The real equilibrium here is the propulsive paean director and […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Mommy’ (2015)
Motherhood can turn the best maternal caregivers into moonstruck lunatics, an identifier that pays tribute to the always changing waxing and waning night-sky luminary. The Canadian film Mommy makes a meal of the Lunar principle – tied to nurturing, emotion, security, family and home – in all its messy, excessive and often thankless glory. Written […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Babadook’ (2014)
Death is often seen as a conduit to new life, a theme at the heart of The Babadook, a psychological horror film written and directed by Australian Jennifer Kent. Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single mother, whose husband died seven years earlier in a car crash while driving her to hospital to deliver her child. […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Homesman’ (2014)
Despite the title, The Homesman is a film that richly explores the Feminine and provides a heartbreaking contrast between the Venusian archetype of seduction and beauty and the Lunar archetype of nurturing, caring and mothering. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, the movie is set around 1850, as hardy folk from the East migrated westward. Mary […]