Orpheus - Anu Keita

  Cocteau's version of the Orpheus did a really good job of making allusions between the original Greek mythology, and relating it back to the modernist themes that we could relate too. It was interesting to see how art and forbidden love play a hand with each other. Forbidden love is largely present. I feel like all artists suffer from this. There's a reason why they're called starving artists and not starving philanthropists. They're always looking and searching for their muse, for their next piece of inspiration. The ones that find it like Michael Angelou create masterpieces and live full lives, while the ones that don't stay stagnant, like Orpheus. He was an great artist and poet that started and ended the movie at his same position in life, trying to obtain the unattainable, and in the end losing everything.

    Princess Death and Heurtebise were hopelessly in love with Orpheus and Eurydice, only to have neither one of them end up with their hearts desire. Death was forced to kill Eurydice because of her feeling for Orpheus. To me, this spoke a little to the "queerness". Orpheus couldn't make it work with his wife, and being with death caused her to break so many rules, their relationship would've never been secure. Eurydice was just as egotistical and narcissistic as Orpheus, which is why neither could ever cater to the others needs and why it never would've worked between her and Heurtebise, because literal death and her servant had more humanity than the two humans. "The String of Desire," says that "Her desire for Orpheus causes her to violate these rules thus leading, the film suggests, to punishment and suffering." Usually when death is introduced into a film, death always wins because it's inevitable. She broke the rules and paid the price, whereas Orpheus broke the rules and still wound up with his wife and unborn child, but the death of a lifelong search for immorality, that he has no knowledge of obtaining.

    The mirrors were a little weird to me. Generally, because of their reflectiveness, mirrors are equivalent to eyes. Eyes are the window to the soul, so I guess mirrors could be the portal to one's inner self. Orpheus found his true self and lost it looking for love, while death embraces her true self for love and loses everything.