Comments on "Water and film" - Faerye Net

postscript

2008-08-21T11:05:23+00:00

Here’s a little section I loved in Waltzing the Cat:

"’For the people of my country,’ Renato said, ‘water is everything: love, life, religion…even God.’

‘It is like that for me too,’ I said. ‘In English we call that a metaphor.’

‘Of course,’ said Renato, ‘and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.’"

re: M. Night Shyamalan and water

2008-08-20T11:53:35+00:00

You bring up an excellent point, TK. I haven’t seen Lady in the Water, but given the films of his I have seen, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if MNS digs the Jungian archetypes.

At the very least, it should be interesting to keep a watch on his films, and those with David S. Goyer on the story/writing credit and see whether this crops up again.

re: Water films

2008-08-20T11:50:12+00:00

Dear EMeta,

I admit it, despite my love for Lori Petty, I have not seen Tank Girl. So your post has a ribbon of mystery.

Re: books. Yesterday I noticed that I’d tagged Pam Houston’s shnovel Waltzing the Cat ‘drowning’, and paused to consider how much of that book (which makes the love-finding anxieties of a 30-ish straight woman interesting again by overlaying them on a white-water, hang-gliding, hurricane-skirting lifestyle) involves danger by water. Eenteresting.

M. Night Shyamalan and water

2008-08-19T11:40:21+00:00

One that comes to my mind is Unbreakable. In an interesting twist, it is the otherwise impervious hero figure who is vulnerable to water. In fact, Shyamalan seems to enjoy toying with water symbolism in general – Signs, Unbreakable, Lady in the Water – it’s everywhere. My notoriously bad memory for stories means the details are a bit murky for me to speculate on where he’s going with it all, but I’m sure it’s fascinating.

Water films

2008-08-18T12:25:11+00:00

Just off the top of my head:

Any given Sleepy Hollow adaptation draws from the original folk tale power of running water.

Most invisible men are betrayed by water, take of that what you will. I could take the evil that grows inside them from being alienated from social interaction is counteracted by their own subconscious conscience. But I won’t.

And then there’s Tank Girl.

Does Hunt for Red October really traverse the depths of the human subconscious? Probably not. But a similar argument might be made for endless summer.

I would offer up Bridge to Terebethia, but I’ve never seen the movie & don’t really remember the book.

Ooo ooo! LotR!

And then there’s Tank Girl…

Looking back, all of these suggestions (excluding Endless Summer, which was a throwaway anyway) are movie adoptions, not original stories. I’m not sure if this says something about my memory, my film preferences, or the tendencies of novelists to be more allegorical than screenwriters. Probably all of the above.

Then there’s attacks from water, like Jaws, or Godzilla. But I’m going to stop the musings now.