Prometheus | |
---|---|
Written by | Tony Harrison |
Screenplay by | Tony Harrison |
Release date |
|
Running time | 130 minutes |
Country | Britain |
Languages | English and Ancient Greek |
Budget | 1.5 million pounds. [1] |
Prometheus is a 1998 film-poem created by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison, starring Micheal Feast in the role of Hermes. The film-poem examines the political and social issues connected to the fall of the working class in England, amidst the more general phenomenon of the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, using the myth of Prometheus as a metaphor for the struggles of the working class and the devastation brought on by political conflict and unfettered industrialisation. It was broadcast on Channel 4 and was also shown at the Locarno Film Festival. It was used by Harrison to highlight the plight of the workers both in Europe and in Britain. His film-poem begins at a post-industrialist wasteland in Yorkshire brought upon by the politics of confrontation between the miners and the government of Margaret Thatcher. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] It has been described as "the most important artistic reaction to the fall of the British working class" at the end of the twentieth century.
Harrison has acknowledged that he was influenced by Percy Shelley 's work Prometheus Unbound . Harrison actually started the planning of his film at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome so that he could be in the same city as Shelley when he was writing his drama. [2]
Walter Sparrow plays the role of an elderly, emphysema-laden Yorkshire miner who is about to retire. In a bleak, post-industrialist landscape, the old miner meets a boy who is reciting a poem about Prometheus. The youth is played by Jonathan Waintridge. The miner eventually ends up in a depleted local cinema and, though sick with emphysema, he defiantly lights-up a cigarette. With the old miner at the theatre, the run-down projection equipment suddenly comes to life and projections appear on the old screen. [1] [2] [4] [5]
The person directing these projections is Hermes, the messenger of Zeus. Both Hermes and Zeus represent capitalism in the film. Hermes is played by Michael Feast. Hermes, with a British upper-class accent which contrasts with the coalminer's warm, smoky, northern working-class accent, [1] starts lecturing the coalminer about the failings of humankind. Hermes is presented as cruel and obnoxious, in one instance acting as the tallyman in a mine which has been designated to close, lowering the miners in the pit while attacking them in verse: [7]
This is the terminus ad quem
For bolshy bastards such as them
As they give Hermes their tally, the miners quietly mumble expletives at him. In the pit scene Hermes also quotes verses 944-946 in ancient Greek from Prometheus Bound. [7] Eventually, the old man starts seeing a huge golden statue of Prometheus, nicknamed Goldenballs in the film. [5] It is revealed that the statue was made by melting the bodies of Yorkshire miners. [1] [2] [4] [5] The film traces the trip the statue takes in the back of a truck through Eastern Europe, [4] revisiting the horrors of World War II European History in places such as Auschwitz, Dresden and the Polish industrial city of Nowa Huta. As they pass from these places, Hermes tries to have the locals denounce Prometheus for their condition and all the ills he has brought them with his gift, rather than Zeus. Sometimes he succeeds, but not in Nowa Huta where the locals refuse to denounce Prometheus much to the chagrin of Hermes, who then lashes out at them through rhyming verses. [2]
I should have known those stubborn Poles
still had Prometheus in their souls.
It angers Zeus. It riles. It galls
Such grovelling to Goldenballs.
In the end, the old coal miner, who represents the spirit of Prometheus in the film, [2] arrives in Greece where he speaks about the powerful impact of fire on humankind. [1] [2] [4] [5]
In Reception Studies it is mentioned that Harrison in his film has metaphorically "linked the gnawed liver of Prometheus to the eagle of genocide and the blackened lungs of the coalminers" and it was the bodies of the Yorkshire coalminers which were consumed by fire, as in Émile Zola's Germinal , that were used in the casting of the statue of Harrison's Prometheus. [6]
Edith Hall has written that she is convinced that Harrison's Prometheus is "the most important artistic reaction to the fall of the British working class" at the end of the twentieth century, [1] [6] and considers it as "the most important adaptation of classical myth for a radical political purpose for years" and Harrison's "most brilliant artwork, with the possible exception of his stage play The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus ". [1]
Hall continues that Harrison's vision of a statue made by melting miners' bodies is a "horrific metamorphosis" where "miners’ bodies are transformed visually into bullion" and that such transformation "from concrete to abstract labor, and thence to symbolic capital" highlights Harrison's use of imagery which involves capitalist and Marxist economic theories of the twentieth century. [1]
Edith Hall also compares the similarities between Harrison's work and Theo Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze in that both works feature nonlinear-chronological movement through Eastern European places characterised by "monumental statuary" and classifies Harrison's Prometheus as a threnody although certain elements relating to the imagery of the film and its adaptation of classical themes also bring it closer to the film techniques of Michelakis. According to Lorna Hardwick, the film-poem attempts a new type of redemptive effect by using art as a "mirror to horrors" saving the audience from turning to stone, quoting Rowland's comments about Harrison's film-poem The Gaze of the Gorgon . [6]
Helen Morales remarks that the Yorkshire coal miner "embodies the spirit of Prometheus" and that his dialogues with Hermes, "Zeus' cruel henchman", are "brilliant articulations of oppression and defiance". [2]
Carol Dougherty mentions that in Harrison's 1995 play The Labourers of Herakles there is a scene where Hercules, while lying on his own funeral pyre, delivers a speech about the power of fire in a manner reminiscent of Harrison's treatment of the same theme in Prometheus. [8]
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is one of the Titans and a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.
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Tony Harrison is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Beeston, Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse writers and many of his works have been performed at the Royal National Theatre. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem "V", as well as his versions of dramatic works: from ancient Greek such as the tragedies Oresteia and Lysistrata, from French Molière's The Misanthrope, from Middle English The Mysteries. He is also noted for his outspoken views, particularly those on the Iraq War. In 2015, he was honoured with the David Cohen Prize in recognition for his body of work. In 2016, he was awarded the Premio Feronia in Rome.
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Nowa Huta is the easternmost district of Kraków, Poland. With more than 200,000 inhabitants, it is one of the most populous areas of the city. Until 1990, the neighbouring districts were considered expansions of the original Nowa Huta district, and were linked by the same tramway system. They are now separate districts of Kraków.
The Dionysiaca is an ancient Greek epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from Greco-Roman antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters, the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his triumphant return to the west.
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a legendary figure of Cyprus. He is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.
Prometheus is a figure in Greek mythology.
Works and Days is a didactic poem written by ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. It is in dactylic hexameter and contains 828 lines. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts.
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The Nowa Huta. Okruchy życia i meandry historii is a 2003 photo anthology compiled by Jerzy Aleksander Karnasiewicz and illustrated with photographs of Nowa Huta district of Kraków, Poland; which were taken in its early days, and between 1979-2003. The book, published bilingually in Polish and English, contains essays, sociological dissertations, poetry and the homilies of future Pope John Paul II given during his visits to Nowa Huta. The anthology was unveiled by the president of Kraków, prof. Jacek Majchrowski on October 14, 2003, with the honorary patronage of Cardinal Franciszek Macharski.
Howard S. Rubenstein was an American physician, playwright and translator of classical Greek drama.
The Gaze of the Gorgon is a film-poem created in 1992 by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison which examines the politics of conflict in the 20th century using the Gorgon and her petrifying gaze as a metaphor for the actions of the elites during wars and other crises and the muted response and apathy these traumatic events generate among the masses seemingly petrified by modern Gorgons gazing at them from pediments constructed by the elites.
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus is a 1990 play by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison. It is partially based on Ichneutae, a satyr play by the fifth-century BC Athenian dramatist Sophocles, which was found in fragments at the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus.
The Labourers of Herakles is a 1995 play created by English poet and playwright Tony Harrison. It is partially based on remaining fragments of tragedies by ancient Greek dramatist Phrynichos, one of the earliest tragedians. Harrison's play deals with genocide and ethnic cleansing and uses Heracles's filicide as a metaphor for the unspeakable horrors of war and man's inhumanity to man.
...an essential requirement in a film where the most unlikely wheezing ex-miner is slowly made to represent Prometheus himself
...where he sees a Prometheus statue fashioned from the bodies of unemployed Yorkshire miners. As the statue makes a journey in an open truck through the countries of the former Eastern Europe, it brings forth memories of the past and WWII horrors (Auschwitz, Dresden)
...and, of course, the huge statue of Prometheus, nicknamed 'Golden Balls', in the film of the same name.