Andrei Tarkovsky said that there are two types of directors.
The ones that imitate the world they inhabit.
And the ones that create their own.
I wonder where that leaves directors that make period pieces.
They strive to recreate a world but not one that exists anymore or that they have ever
lived in.
It demands an extreme amount of attention to detail to breathe air into them and unlike
wholly created worlds, you are restrained to a certain reality.
Restricted by the boundaries of the past.
If you don't respect these limits, you run the risk of being anachronistic or revisionist
and end up with extravagant well decorated movies but lack an authentic (genuine) soul
from the period you're trying to revive.
So how do you go on to recreate a world that you have not lived in?
How does one bring back not just the look but the feel, the thoughts and the words of
the past without sounding hollow?
There has been a director that has been successful in breathing life into stories of a bygone
era.
Exploring old folklore.
Be it witches attacking a puritan family in the 17th century or two lighthouse keepers
spiraling into insanity in the late 1800's.
In today's video, we will be looking at how Robert Eggers (one of my favorite directors
of the last decade) manages to bring folklore to life by using atmosphere, nature and archetypes.
Spoilers will follow.
"Keeping secrets aren't ye?"
Before we continue, make sure to stay for the end of the video to check our limited
release Screened channel t-shirts now back to the show.
In order to provide the rarefied air needed for folklore to be brought to life, you need
it to be sustained by the right atmosphere.
Folktales are stories of common folk of the past, their daily lives, their struggles their
conflicts.
So naturally, to be able to represent that you need to be able to understand them.
Robert Eggers must first make these stories feel real to him.
It must come from an actual place.
"If I can't experience what I write as my own memories, it can't be truthful."
He does so by obsessing over research.
He personally searches for books on and of the era, journals of real lived experiences,
contemporary works of art, lexicons, slang dictionaries, dissertations, learning the
rules of the dialect and of that reality, in the process, eliminating any preconceived
notions of the past until he feels that these stories are his own memories so that he has
the ability (or even the right) to talk about them.
For him atmosphere is born out of the accumulation of details.
And we can feel the fruits of his research in the details inside the frame and on the
page.
We have descriptions of sounds, smells, and even character thoughts and well-established
geographic sense of time and place that spans a few paragraphs longer than what would usually
be common practice in other screenplays.
"EXT.
PILOT ROCK.
NEAR THE LIVING QUARTERS - SUNSET TWO OTHER MEN (late 60s, same uniforms) exit
the one-story CLAPBOARD SHACK that adjoins THE LIGHTHOUSE by a remarkably long breezeway.
They are the departing LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS -- "WICKIES," as they refer to themselves.
They lug gunny sacks over their shoulders, and drag their rope-handled ditty boxes by
their sides, keeping their heads down.
Their bearded faces are craggy and leaden.
They reek of tobacco, must, and salt.
They shuffle toward their relief: THE MEN FROM THE TENDER, carrying their supplies.
The four almost exchange glances.
But they don't bother.
THE FOGHORN bellows."
By creating atmosphere, he is able to supply the fertile ground to get great performances
from his actors and great reactions from the audience.
You feel like you're watching a lost documentary.
The atmosphere also places you inside the characters' headspace, this can be seen with
the use of the movies' aspect ratios.
In The Lighthouse the nearly square 1.19:1 aspect ratio extends to us the cramped closed
quarter sensation felt by the lighthouse keepers.
A good example is this scene where young Thomas is running outside in the storm, but if you
noticed the way it's framed close to his face...he looks like he is running in place...drowning
in the frame.
Showing that no matter the effort, he can't escape.
In The Witch the 1.66:1 aspect ratio is wider but also great to represent the tall trees
of the forest "looming over" the characters.
The trees being an extension of the unseen witch.
The lack of light due to the period also makes us feel like we are huddling around a campfire
ready for a ghost story.
Eggers chose to film on overcast days to give an ever present "gloomy" feel and at night...we
only have dimly candle lit rooms...the flame flickering in the dark just like the family's
faith being tested.
At the end, when the characters have succumbed to the worst, we see a roaring fire as Thomasin's
new faith lets her take flight.
The black and white in The Lighthouse is of course used aesthetically to give an old timey
feel but it also helps with the blurring of identity between the two Thomas' and where
the real and the unreal is harder to separate.
This sense of atmosphere is what Eggers strives to achieve so that when the supernatural aspects
are introduced, they can feel as real as everything else:
"In order to effectively depict this world in which ordinary people understood supernatural
occurrences to be an expected part of life, it is essential that all aspects of the film
to be carried out with utter naturalism.
The characters must appear as real farmers, not actors with dirty faces.
Even the supernatural elements must be photographed as realistically as possible.
Yet, with all this authenticity and "realism," it is still a folktale, a dream.
A nightmare from the past."
When talking about Folktales it's important to make a distinction from fairy tales.
Folk stories started within the oral history shared by a community or a culture same as
fairy tales, but the difference is that folktales are usually anonymous; attributed to a place
and not a person.
The audience for these stories also deviates.
In fairy tales, we can see princes and kings because it was mostly for an aristocratic
crowd while folk stories where about everyday people for everyday people.
The most defining feature in fairy tales is the presence of magic and supernatural creatures.
Folktales can be supernatural but don't use magic to solve the characters' struggles.
What they usually explore is the conflict between humans vs nature or humans vs other
humans.
In both movies we see nature be an important source of conflict.
In The Witch, Thomasin and her family are having a hard time acclimating to their exile
in the woods.
Their crops are rotten, their livestock is sick ...and they are having difficulty hunting
or setting traps...
In The Lighthouse, young and old Thomas are awaiting relief from their duties but due
to a nor-easterly wind, a storm leaves them marooned on the island with dwindling rations
and with no knowledge as to when anyone will come to help them.
This is representative of the reality of the time.
Survival against the elements, fighting a losing battle against nature.
Being left to your own devices and seeing how that pushes you to act out.
Tensions rise between the members of the family and the lighthouse keepers start experiencing
an extreme case of cabin fever.
All they are left with are the beliefs they have to protect themselves.
"You a praying man Winslow?"
In The Lighthouse it comes in the way of superstitions.
Avoiding bad omens, as to not anger the sea.
Even tattoos were seen as a way of gaining favor with the gods.
Since sailors would find themselves at the mercy of the sea for extended periods of time,
they would conjure up different ways to try and control the uncontrollable.
"Bad luck to kill a seabird!"
In The Witch we see religion play a big part in the families decision making, it was embedded
in their way of life.
A way to protect themselves from the unknown...what else did they have?
If common knowledge was that God had all the answers then it would make sense to follow
that belief when you where up against something you didn't understand.
"We must find some light in our darkness, tomorrow we will have fast day"
The witches and the devil are the antagonists in the movie, but the conflict is focused
on the human characters.
What we see is their beliefs be tested and how they struggle within the silence of god.
At the end Thomasin is left despondent after seeing her entire family die... she just goes
to sit in silence... a contrast to the pious girl we meet at the beginning of the movie
praying for the forgiveness of her sins: "I have been idle of my work, disobedient
of mine parents, neglectful of my prayer."
And yet after having to kill her own mother...she murmurs not a single word...no one to speak
to...no one to answer.
"She takes a blanket from her parent's bed and drapes it over her shoulders, covering
her bloody shift.
She sits at the table.
She puts her head on the table.
Empty.
She closes her eyes.
BLACK."
Just silence.
To be able to bring folklore to life you have to go back to the mindset of the time.
The struggles, the coping mechanisms, the beliefs and (especially for horror) the fears.
Be it the weather, starvation, witches, bad omens, losing your soul or Gods absence.
"I like it when I don't understand these people" "these are alien thoughts these are alien
people" "if I was alive then I would have thought
exactly like that."
"Thomasin!"
When you think of the woods you might associate it to danger or the unknown.
What about witches, Billy goats, sailors or mermaids?
We already have a set of ideas or emotions related to these words without having any
well-versed knowledge of them.
Well that's how archetypes work.
They are recurring motifs, images and symbols that we are aware of.
Carl Jung posits that we have a system of images that we all share in a collective unconscious.
Concepts that we've inherited from past generations.
He reached this conclusion by noticing repeating symbols and concept in the stories, myths
and religions from different isolated cultures.
It's kind of how we all usually share the same primal fears and aversions by instinct.
This philosophy has been used to decipher the tales of the past but also to create new
stories using character archetypes, settings and symbols.
When it comes to Robert Eggers, I find he uses archetypal storytelling in two ways in
his movies.
In The Lighthouse, it's to evoke.
We see the setting of the island for isolation and introspection.
The sea gulls and the mermaids are mariner symbols for bad omens, mermaids representing
the seductive but treacherous nature of the sea.
We see some mythical imagery with the demigod Triton and what seems to be a representation
of the punishment of Prometheus; the titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to
humans.
Liken it to how young Thomas stole a glance inside the mystery of the light.
Although, we are not meant to know if all of this is a literal or figurative representation
of divine punishment.
The array of imagery are not dots to be connected to provide an explanation but to make us feel
the confusion and perhaps insanity of the main character.
It's an enumeration of symbols with loose associations given by an unreliable narrator
that will always lead to a haunting but delightful question mark.
"I'm probably a figment of your imagination...this rock is a figment of your imagination too"
In The Witch, we see the archetypes of the family members be turned on their heads.
The father that can't provide, can't protect, can't hunt, The mother that is supposed to
be a caregiver turns cold and jealous, the innocent daughter that is trying to be pious
kills her own kin, disobeys and ends up following the devil.
When we witness the corruption of the family archetype it feels especially striking and
devastating because the known associations and meanings are used against us.
It provokes what's already in our unconscious knowledge...stirs it up and brings strong
emotions to the surface.
Robert Eggers feels that perhaps this is why the old myths are so timeless...because archetypal
storytelling is timeless and speaks to a deeper human experience that we all share and to
some degree understand.
That's why he's so attracted to the past and folklore.
"The dead speak loudly to me" They are stories that still echo within us
while remaining mysterious.
Mysteries that Robert Eggers wants to keep uncovering...by bringing them back to life.
Tarkovsky said that those who create new worlds are the poets of cinema.
Poets that give expression to what lies deep inside the audience.
I hope you've enjoyed our video on Robert Eggers and our brief overview of his process.
We put a list of his most influential films in our Lettterboxd account as well as helpful
research links below if you are interested.
Also, we invite you to take a look at our channel's limited release t-shirts that we
are very proud of and hope you will like!
We wanted a cool line art design using the channels slogan "What stories say about us"
composed of elements from our most popular videos like Cosmic Horror, Magical Realism,
Doomed Romance and others.
You can get them by following the bonfire link in the description.
You only have until June 7 to get one before they compile all the orders and ship them
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And finally, today's musical composition was made by Eduardo Gonzalez, if you like his
work you find his information down in the description.
Until next time.