A Filmmaker's Guide to: Metaphor on Screen

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Metaphor on Screen

What is a 'metaphor'?

I know this is overly simplistic, but it is the first step in understanding the full story. We know that a metaphor is the direct comparison between two things - sometimes between the physical (being the comparative) and the abstract (the idea which is being made into metaphor).

What is a metaphor on screen?

When we look at a metaphor on a screen therefore, we are looking specifically for physical things that are directly representative of abstract ideas and/or themes in order to create meaning from the film as a whole. Normally, the physical thing is explored in depth and that should make it easier to see a definitive pattern between the physical thing(s) and the one or two abstract ideas which form the 'message' of the movie.

Case Study: Oedipus Rex (1967)

When I first watched this movie, the initial thing that I noticed was the language, the symbolism and the metaphor surrounding fate and inevitability. Much like in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" ten years earlier, this film depicts that the knowing of fate and the prevention of it does not necessarily mean that it will not happen. In fact, it may not change the inevitability of it at all.

The scene in which Oedipus meets the blind man is one of the most important scenes in the entire film because this is where the prophecy, which was before simply known through language and possibly through the scene where the child is left to die, is made into something very physical. It is made into a direct comparison. Oedipus never really treats the blind man well and is quite harsh towards him in action and behaviour. One could say that there is something hyper-critical of him that Oedipus has. It is only towards the end of the film that we realise that it has profound amounts of meaning in comparison to what happens to Oedipus (and if you already know the Sophocles' story then you'll know that he gouges out his own eyes and blinds himself).

There is one more scene that shows us this hyper-critical nature of Oedipus towards the blind man and that is where Oedipus is trying to find out who killed the king of the kingdom who was king before him - King Laius. Unknowingly, it was Oedipus himself that killed him, the blind man comes to warn him about fate, the future and the prophecy. When Oedipus explores this further, he ultimately realise the truth that he has, in fact, fulfilled the prophecy. The problem that Jocasta has therefore, is whether preventing the prophecy by dumping the child in the desert did any real good at all.

The answer is obviously that it didn't. Why? Because the blind man represents that direct inevitability of fate and the blinding of Oedipus means that it is doomed to happen again.

Conclusion

Another film you can explore the metaphor of the inevitability of fate in is Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (1957). It uses relatively the same cyclic reality of prevention meaning nothing and that the entire sequence is doomed to happen over and over again. The main message: man will never learn from his mistakes. He is therefore exactly that: doomed to repeat them.