Spring Spring is Edenic—all of the ancient cultures yearn for the lost paradise or “golden age” which is described as a recurring rebirth. What they are really after is the bliss of childhood, rarely captured as poetically as in Paradjanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors or Malick’s Tree of Life. Summer I concur with De Quincey in Suspiria de Profundis when he discerns that death is, subtly, more pronounced in summertime (not the finality of winter--a lingering malaise.) It is also, linked to this, an urge to escape. Antonioni and Wenders both capture this hollow, fleeting emptiness of summer and the limbo its travelers are perpetually caught within. Autumn Autumn is the turning towards love (or the lack thereof), a longing for romance crystallized in the boyhood adolescent fantasies of Fellini's Amarcord. And it is the turning away from others to face the inner self and its recollections and regrets. This is crystallized in The Double Life of Veronique. Winter Winter is, of course, associated with death as it is the death of the year. On a more submerged level, though, winter deepens the return to one's core which unfolds in autumn. In winter one finally is face-to-face with the sublime infinite void and the meaning of home, represented, respectively, in the vastness of the primeval Siberian wilderness in Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala and the sacred climbing of the mount and snowflakes surrounding birth in Brakhage's Dog Star Man.
Posts Tagged ‘wheel of the year’
The Four Seasons In Cinema
Posted in Mazing, tagged Akira Kurosawa, amarcord, autumn films, autumn movies, autumn scenes, childhood, cycle of the year, dersu uzala, dog star man, double life of veronique, eden, emptiness, existentialism, fellini, four seasons, golden age, home, infinite void, kieslowski, lost paradise, meaning of home, Michelangelo Antonioni, paris, recollection, regret, road movies, seasonal cycle, seasonal scenes, seasons, sergei paradjanov, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, spring films, spring movies, spring scenes, stan brakhage, summer films, summer movies, summer scenes, terrence malick, texas, The Passenger, the sublime, the tree of life, travelers, traveling, wanderers, wandering, wheel of the year, wim wenders, winter films, winter movies, winter scenes on September 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The Muse in the Maze 