Sunrise and the anima

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Watched this film with a friend on the internet. We had to count down to make sure we started the film on time and then discussed it in real time in a chat room. I recently watched another silent film by murnau called tabu and selected another one of his films somewhat at random.

This filmed turned out to be wildly different from tabu which was about a forbidden love between two 'primative' people who escape their island and  seek refuge in near-by areas that are being colonized by capitalist culture. The movie seemed to link primative tabu and modern debt as two sides of the same coin. The debt, island tabu, and the woman's compassion for her father seem to dissolve the bond between the people who would otherwise belong together.

Sunrise is another love story but between a farm couple. The relationship has turned stale. The man sits idle in front of a table of bread showing no hunger for it, and before he can wait for his wife to bring him his supper he slips out side passing over a fence to meet a darkly dressed woman from the city in the brush of a forested area. 

The presence of the moon and water suggest this femme fatale is a stand in for the unconscious mediator about to bring to consciousness what is already laying dormant in his mind--murder his wife and elope with this shadowy lady to the city.

There were several scenes in which the film was richly filmed which surprised my naive understanding of what silent films were. One scene that stand out in my memory is transition the man takes from his house to meet his mistress in the woods. The transformation from saccharine domestic life to this garden of erotic longing was palpable. We follow him to a fence that draws the boundary between his wife and the seductress. Then after he passes over the fence the camera merges with his sight and we become him as he sees her for the first time in the film under the moon and twirling a flower as if enchanting it and then discards it.

The next scene happens right after he attempts to murder his wife but emotionally capitulates and his wife flees fully aware of his intentions while the husband awkwardly pursues her urging her not to be afraid of him. By per chance she seems to find a trolley going to the city and boards. Interesting enough this is plan that the man and the mistress had in mind re: running away to the city. The trolley ride is suspenseful. The wife is safe from harm because there are so many witnesses around but still feels betrayed and his stuck in a box with her husband who is conflicted and wont leave her alone. The scene then turns away from these two characters and focuses on trolley driver and his lack of discern for what is going on between them. We then transition from the farm to the city where we trade flauna for iron trusses and large letters of billboards.

I wish I could recall more scenes with clarity but these were just the ones that stick out but don't between the two tell the whole story. The movie itself was crafted using metaphor and at times neglecting reality as it normally is before it is considered acutely as a poet. Even though it was obvious that the movies language was more proem than pros, there were intense feelings of reality. The turmoil the wife was in just after she realized what lied behind her husband's plans after she was dressed up as if she was going on a date. The person I was watching it expressed the same reaction without me confiding mine to hers.

The Syzygy: Anima and Animus
For some reason these archetypes are what fascinate me most about the collective unconscious. I see them as what is necessary for art and maybe that is why I love them.

In the previous section jung described the shadow. This part of the unconscious is some what familiar in that it is the part of us we dissociate with but could infer if we got past that there is a side of us we do not find tasteful lurking in our minds. It is as if we make this unconscious because we don't want to think about it.

The anima is different in that it isn't so much repressed. It's just boarder between what is conscious and the part of us that is so unconscious that it is off limits. The anima has a perplexing role of bringing what isn't conscious and confront consciousness with it. Our pysche tends to personify this in a person--it is generally a person of opposite gender. This character also has different gender roles. The masculine is more logical with reason and the feminine has the characteristics of irrationality and other feminine stereotypes. Reading this seems kind of scandalous and mainly I'm more concerned with the role the person plays as a mediator of the unconscious and not the whole gender thing.

Jung speaks of this character in other essays more fondly proclaiming if people lose touch with it it has disastrous consequences on one's mood.  But here this person is treated more harshly as a cause for conflict and projecting unconscious things to the world in ways we aren't aware of. She is autonomous from the ego and often the conscious mind has turn inwards and reflect on what she has planned.