As we read and watch myth, we transcend/bracket our everyday world affairs and enter into a different space and different time.
This gives us some insight into myth and its relationship to film. We can begin to question films by asking about the world that is presented to us.
Describe the world of the film.
In what was does the film get me to participate in this world? Through which characters? What does this character represent?
What is the ideal that the film pushes?
Not only do myths throw us into an alternate reality, they also focus on central human tensions and conflicts within this reality.
These conflicts range from general categories of good and evil to basic value conflicts. Sometimes the myth will resolve the conflict and sometimes it will not. We can ask the following sorts of questions:
Is there a conflict in this film?
What type of conflict is it? If it is a value conflict, what values are at play? If it is a conflict of categories, what categories are at
play? How are these values/categories understood?
Does the film resolve the conflict? What is its resolution?
Is there a way different way in which the conflict could have been resolved?
Do you see the conflict as important or superficial?
Myths also have a reality and truth sense to them in that they deal with meaning. The meaningfulness of life is a large part of our basic constitution as human beings. In other words, we are constituted/made of a specific ilk, and our search for meaning is so pertinent for our lives that we are ,in Maurice Merlou-Ponty's words, "condemned to meaning". What Merlou-Ponty meant here is that the world is the background condition for meaning,, and because we are in the world, even a part of the world, then we cannot avoid meaning. Myths deal with our basic human experiences of the world and all that is included within our attempts of building and construction our worldview. With this in mind, we might ask the following questions:
What is the basic human experience that is presented to us? Is there a cultural understanding of this experience, if so, what is it?
Is there "slippage" between the world of the film and the world outside the theatre? Does the film suggest a correction to the way we view things outside of the theatre?
Does the film have a moral message about the basic human experience (1)?
Finally, myths require understanding or in Hans Georg Gadamer's words, application.
Are there multiple meanings at work?
What are the structures that make the myth work? What is the cultural context of the myth itself?
Are there alternative visions other than the one(s) that the myth offers?
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1. What are the relationships of the characters?
2. Which characters do I find to be the most interesting?
3. Which one(s) do I care for the most?
4. Which one(s) do I dislike the most?
5. What do I want to happen?
6. What am I afraid will happen?
7. Where does the film take place?
8. Which lines, phrases, words seem to be most important?
9. Which lines, phrases, words resonate powerfully with me?
10. Do these lines, phrases, words, give me insight into the film as a whole?