Mirror, Mirror on the Wall - Sarah Dickerson
Although there are multiple themes throughout the film "Orpheus", the theme of mirrors had caught my eye the most. From a production standpoint I liked how they used mirrors as a special effect in the film, considering how old this movie is it's pretty impressive what they were able to do and in my opinion pretty creative (even if it does seem a little cheesy compared to all the effects we see today). From the start of the film mirrors are a very relevant symbol. My biggest takeaway of the whole mirror thing is that mirrors themselves represent death, as well as an alternate reality. Every time you look into a mirror you are older, therefore you are closer to death. As for the film the alternate reality comes from the mirror representing some sort of gateway into another world. For example in the beginning of the film when we found out the Princess was actually the spirit of death and she brought the man back to life. When she brought his body back from the dead and lead him through the mirror this implied going into another reality, at least from my point of view.
Or when the mirror cracks, this is implying that something eerie is obviously going on, a broken mirror is never seen as a good sign.
Another example from another technological standpoint when the Princess, or Death's, reflection wasn't visible in the mirror. We should have been able to see it, but we couldn't. This was pretty cool for both the storyline as well as editing purposes.
This being said it made sense to me when we talked about queerness in relation to this movie prior to watching it, however when we actually viewed the film it was difficult for me to see it. I know that it isn't supposed to be in my face and that I have to look for small details and such, but I just couldn't see that. I'm hoping that by reading other people's posts I will be able to get more of an idea of how queerness relates to the film.
Sarah, I totally get your point. I totally agree that the mirrors are a symbol or a representation of death. I thought it was an interesting concept to help tell the story that way. It really made it have a very realistic and artistic feel too it. I also agree with your statement about the queerness, that in this specific movie its not really a main point but there could be queer undertones. I also love how you put together the editing techniques and they work together with the story. I think it always interesting to see how the movie is edited to see how that affects the outcome of the story and how it is perceived by the audience.
ReplyDeleteSarah, you totally nailed it with the fact that these mirrors really had some type of symbolism to death. I personally thought that the mirrors helped to show that Orphee was homosexual in some way especially how Orphee reacted to these mirrors, especially during the fist scene where he saw the princess go through one the very time. I will be 100 percent honest with you, I thought the very same thing with mirrors relating to death because it clearly did, whether it was when the princess took the wife into the mirror or when Orphee himself hopped into one to go to death, it cleary said that these mirrors were the gateway to the other world. One more thing, I also had a really hard time seeing how this movie could be queer or homosexual in any way, if you read my post I felt like I was speculating almost everything that could some how be related to any of these. Sorry if you read my passage and get lost with my ideas since they were mostly all opinions and theories that I had come up with after watching this movie. Awsome post btw.
ReplyDeleteSarah,
ReplyDeleteYou made some really great points in your post that I never even thought about! I liked when you said, "Every time you look into a mirror you are older, therefore you are closer to death." I thought that was such a powerful statement and it really ties the whole movie together and why they chose to incorporate mirrors. I also had difficulty with seeing the queerness in the film. The reading helped me understand it a little bit more, but I'm glad I'm not the only one!
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI think you did touch on the queer aspects of the film here without realizing it. Before the showing of the film Dr. Mcrae was talking about how the movie was more queer in the aspect of unusual desire and kink. I think death is one of the main examples of this is how "death was symbolized in almost some type of "sexy" manner". There's also the entire narcissistic staring into mirrors and tenderly touching his reflections face Orpheus did which read as pretty queer to me. Hope this helped!
Hi Sarah, I agree with you when you say that the mirrors were especially eye catching throughout this film. This film really makes you think about your own self reflection in a mirror while watching it. I found this to be an extremely inticing film because any film that can get you thinking about yourself and help you reflect on who you are as a person or makes you relate to a character in any way I think is brilliant. I also agree with you when you say you thought it was interesting that they used mirrors creatively from both a production standpoint (with camera angles) as well as a symbolic standpoint (representing the theme of death). I think if no mirrors were used in this movie it would have been just another typical melodrama film. Mirrors really made this film have a playful artistic feel and they made this film way more interesting and relatable.
ReplyDelete