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Film Inquiry Presents DECIPHER: Nature In "The Witch"
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Oct 13, 2023
Welcome to Decipher, featuring Laura Birnbaum! Today, we will be diving into the role of nature in Robert Eggers’ The Witch. Let me know down below what film you would like to decipher next! My Twitter: http://twitter.com/LauraOnFilm My Letterbox: LauraBirnbaum https://letterboxd.com/LauraBirnbaum/ Subscribe to our channel to be kept up to date of our new videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfz... Film Inquiry: http://www.filminquiry.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/filminquiry
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Hello, fellow centerfiles, and welcome to Decipher, where we investigate the various elements of the film to try and decode and decode and interpret the most of the most of the moment
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to try and decode and interpret the messages within them. My name is Laura Bernbaum, and I am a writer and editor at Film Inquiry
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and we're led by the amazing Menanderiever of these video you can check out here
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or down there. I'm not sure where I'm going to put them yet. At Film Inquiry, we really want to create a platform on which to have conversations about film
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and we're extending that conversation here. At DeCyther, we will be using art, history, literature, and even other films
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films to try and decode the films that we love. So without further ado, let's decipher the witch
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The superstitious awe of nature is really intrinsic to the human experience
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People have been captivated by its beauty, its volatility, its unpredictability since the beginning of time
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In Puritan times, the general concepts of wilderness were of both heaven and hell
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The landscape was both a threat to their safety, and it was also the source of their life, with crops, food, and their livelihood at stake
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They had just left the hierarchical and corrupt old world and wanted to start new
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but they were completely unfamiliar with the landscape. These New World Fears are a really common theme in horror films
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We see this with characters moving from city to country, or in this case, the family moves from village to woods
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For this family, their relationship with nature is forged by their relationship with God
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And spoiler alert God is nowhere to be seen in this story In the film itself the woods become a character in the story
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It becomes this anthropomorphized force of nature. Did not plan to say that
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Now, I love when they do this in film and stories in general
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where an inanimate thing becomes an animate thing. You see this in The Shining, like with the..
2:56
the hotel, you see this. I can't think of any others at the moment. You tell me what your
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favorite anthropomorphized thing is in a film that becomes a character. I would love to hear
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Now nature has two meanings. One is that of the natural world and the other is that of
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the nature of man or human nature. Human nature in the Christian or Puritan sense is
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really equivalent with sin and for this family in the witch that is very much the case
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When Caleb is having his, let's call it a fit, he coughs up an apple that has a bite
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taken out of it. This is so representative of the fall of man and
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the original sin of Adam and Eve. The apple represents seduction and sin and lust and human weakness
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Poor Caleb. In the witch, there are several animals that are represented. There is the crow, the head
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hair and most notably the goat, Black Phillip, who should win an Oscar and whose Twitter
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you need to follow and whose face is on my hard cider that I have right here, that I haven't
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opened because I just wanted to wait until we started talking about Black Phillip to open it
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So here we go. Dare I say I'm delicious. Actually, it's not very good
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Okay moving on Now there not a singular point of origin to the correlation between goat and devil but there are many So in the Goya painting there is the Witch Sabbath It called the He
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and it was painted in reference to the Salem Witch Trials. In Greek mythology, there's Pan
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and in the Bible, there's Baphame or Baphomet. I think that's how you pronounce it
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I should have checked that first. Oh well. Now, crows or birds in general, the crow we see in the witch
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they were affiliated with witches in Puritan times. The townsfolk would sometimes theorize that these witches were transforming into crows and ravens and birds
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and hexing other people into transforming into these small creatures. Now, hairs, this one was really interesting for me because I did not know this
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Hairs have been a long-living pagan totem of feminine power. We see this in Greek mythology, we see this in Chinese mythology
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The hair is representative of female power and female sexuality, which in the witch is a huge theme and is definitely worth noting
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Now, I said earlier that nature has two meetings, but I kind of lied
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I actually meant three. I am a singer. Now, Thomason, in my eyes, is one of the greatest final girls in horror history
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She joins the ranks of Wendy Torrance in The Shining and Melanie Daniels and the Birds
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and countless others, where she goes from repression to freedom in the most twisted and messed up ways
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I know. I know it's really messed up. If you look at Thomason's actions at the end of the witch as allegory, she kills her mother
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and finds a new mother in Mother Nature. So there's that, which is kind of messed up
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I never know how to talk about this movie because it just so dark The Witch by Robert Eggers touches on just about every human fear from fears of inadequacy to
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fears of death, hunger, and female sexuality and independence. And all of this takes
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place in the most menacing of woods, isolated from anyone close to them. And it makes for a really
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really scary, scary movie that was my number one film of 2016. I don't know what that says about me
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but there you have it. This film quite literally shook me. I remember sitting in my car after
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seeing it in the theater and being really scared to make the walk from my car to my apartment
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And so I ran and I still haven't been able to shake this film off of me
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This film acts like a Rorschach test to its audience. And it is like holding up a mirror to you and saying
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what are your fears? What are your anxieties? And I can't think of anything scary than that
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So you tell me, what do you think the role of nature is in the witch
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And what did you think of the film? as a whole. Please let me know and be sure to follow Film Inquiry on all of our social media
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We have Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. We have everything. And of course
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Film Inquiry.com, where we post amazing articles all the time for you guys. And I'm starting to
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lose my voice. So I'm going to head off now. But before I do, we do have a new podcast led by
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the incredible J. Ledbetter and Mike Derringer, both of whom I adore. And I'm pretty obsessed
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with this podcast. I'm pretty sure you will be too. So before I completely lose my voice
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I'm going to head off. And from me and Black Phillip, cheers
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Hmm. Still not good. You know, what do you think of the witch and what do you think of the
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nature is, has on..
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