اسطوره و سینما‏‫: کشف ساختار اسطوره‌ای در ۵۰ فیلم به یاد‌ماندنی

by Stuart Voytilla, محمد گذرآبادی (Translator)

Riffing off ideas articulated in Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, Myth and the Movies serves both as a sequel to that book and a series of examples attempting to demonstrate its validity. In his book, Vogler, borrowing ideas from Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, argues that every story follows certain patterns--which he collectively characterizes as a mythic "hero's journey." In Myth and the Movies, Voytilla breaks this journey up into stages, using 50 famous films to illustrate the universality of Vogler's method. During the course of the book, he unpacks the mythic structure of horror, war, drama, romance, comedy, science fiction, action-adventure, the western, and the thriller, drawing on films as diverse as Seven Samurai, The Silence of the Lambs, Annie Hall, and Boyz N the Hood. His charts, maps, and consideration of various archetypal characters ("the shadow," "the trickster," "the herald," "the shapeshifter") and narrative devices ("the elixir," "the adventure," "the threshold," "the road back") provide a clear picture of how Campbell's archetypes can be used for film analysis. And who knows? Perhaps as you follow Voytilla's descriptions, you will be inspired to create some myths of your own. --Raphael Shargel

Genres: Film, Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Theory

359 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Addy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was enlightening to read. I feel like in school, the framework for hero’s journey was drilled into my head, but, being a rebellious student, I didn’t want to abide by that set of rules. This book shows how that framework exists in even the most unexpected genres (romances, comedies, etc.) and that it works.
I thought that Stuart Voytilla’s analyses were very thorough, and offered compelling support for the use of mythic hero’s journey in even more contemporary cinema. I especially enjoyed when he included a diagram of what he was describing. Combined with his thoughtful analysis of each film, I finally began to see why even hundreds of years after Homer’s Odyssey, writers come back to tried and true frameworks like hero’s journey.

[Karl Kronlage · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great to read after The Writer's Journey. Takes a look at films and how they follow the basic hero's journey format.

[Bridget Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! I find the Hero's Journey and different archetypes really interesting and this book applied those archetypes to all sorts of different movies with different genres. It also came with Hero Journey charts for all the movies which were a helpful resource for me. This book explains what each step of the Journey is and all the traditional story archetypes to help better understand the stories. I think reading this book really helped me learn and apply the archetypes to other movies and books.

If you don't care about archetypes, then this book isn't for you. But I am fascinated with these archetypes so I loved it.

[Samuel Chatman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any storyteller. It really breaks down the Hero’s Journey and gives great examples.

[iris the dead flower · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm not sure if i can rate this given that it's just analyses of movies...enjoyable read! interesting to try to fit my weird ass stories through this lens given that possibly any story ever could.

[Wesley F · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good supplement to Writer's Journey by Chris Vogler. Voytilla provides a summary of the hero's journey concept, including some very accessible explanations and analysis. He then applies it to some of the most popular movies of all time from multiple genres.

I was hoping for a bit more commentary than just going through the plot of each movie, but it was still an good exercise.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an interesting application of the Hero's Journey archetype to multiple genres of movies. Some of the analyses may seem a bit forced, but I read it to get myself in the mindframe of completing analyses just like this.

[Paul Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of mythical archetype studies, but have mainly looked at how they apply to sci-fi fantasy film and books, so this look at mythical archetypes in 50 films in a very wide variety of genre was very interesting. A must-read for film buffs, myth buffs, and writers.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cliff's on Campbell's journey stuff applied to movies. It's well done and the partial basis for the class Brower and I created.

[Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable to understanding the structure of not just movies, but also of all great stories.