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Immigration and ‘Mythological’ Memory in
French Cinema: How References to Homer
and Ovid Refigure the European Perception
of Exile
Sébastien Fevry
Abstract
This article examines how migratory experiences are configured in French authorial cinema using narrative models derived from ancient mythology, specifically looking at the films Eden à l’Ouest (dir. Costa-Gavras 2009), Film Socialisme (dir. Godard 2010), and Métamorphoses (dir. Honoré 2014). More precisely, the focus is on a memorial resource little studied until now: the deeply rooted cultural memory based on mythological references to the Greco-Roman tradition. How is this ‘mythological memory’, often cast as foundational ‘European memory,’ useful in describing contemporary migratory experiences? The article suggests that recourse to mythological memory allows filmmakers to go beyond national contexts and paradoxically give a less Eurocentric dimension to the treatment of migrants’ narratives.
Keywords
Migration; French cinema; mythological memory; Europe; authorial cinema
Résumé
Cet article examine comment les expériences migratoires sont configurées dans le cinéma d’auteur français à travers des modèles narratifs empruntés à la mythologie antique. Trois films seront particulièrement analysés :
Eden à l’Ouest (dir. Costa-Gavras 2009), Film Socialisme (dir. Godard 2010) et Métamorphoses (dir. Honoré
2014). Plus précisément, l’attention portera sur une ressource mémorielle peu étudiée jusqu’à présent, mais solidement implantée : la mémoire culturelle basée sur des références mythologiques à la tradition gréco-romaine. Comment cette ‘mémoire mythologique’, souvent présentée comme fondatrice de la mémoire européenne, est-elle utilisée pour décrire les expériences migratoires contemporaines ? L’article montre que le recours à cette mémoire mythologique permet aux réalisateurs d’aller au-delà des contextes nationaux et de donner paradoxalement une dimension moins eurocentrée à la représentation des trajectoires migratoires.
Mots clés
21 This article aims to focus attention on the narrative and genre-related resources available to French filmmakers in representing the contemporary situation of migrants. Rather than examining what Hamid Naficy (2001, 4) has called accented cinema1, i.e., the work of filmmakers who translate their personal experience
of exile and diaspora into cinema, I would like to examine how migratory experiences are configured in French authorial cinema using narrative models derived from ancient mythology, specifically looking at the films Eden à l’Ouest (dir. Costa-Gavras 2009), Film Socialisme (dir. Godard 2010) and Métamorphoses (dir. Honoré 2014). Transcending their French identity, these films were screened at major European film festivals2
and arguably belong to European art cinema (Sojcher 1996, 5-16) characterized by its independent artistic expression and emerging from “a common high cultural heritage which encompasses the history of European thought and the canons and features of Western art and literature” (Bergfelder 2005, 316).
These films enable an exploration of how migrants’ stories are interpreted in the Western European cultural landscape and present narrative models used by French filmmakers who have not necessarily experienced migration first-hand. More precisely, my attention will focus on a memorial resource little studied until now: the deeply rooted cultural memory based on mythological references to the Greco-Roman tradition. Narratives such as Homer’s Odyssey or Ovid’s Metamorphoses have become a central part of Western Europe’s cultural heritage through a historical process whereby the Greco-Roman tradition has been separated from its Mediterranean roots (Bernal 1987, 1-73). How does this ‘mythological memory’,3 often cast as foundational
‘European memory,’4 provide form and meaning to the histories of migrants in Europe? How are mythological
narratives useful in describing contemporary migratory experiences? As Stuart Hall (2003, 44) has already asked, “where is the myth that can re-connect the one to the other”?
Although films like Eden à l’Ouest or Métamorphoses are inspired by Greco-Roman myths relocated in the Western European tradition, I would like to suggest that recourse to mythological memory paradoxically allows filmmakers to go beyond national contexts and give a less Eurocentric5 dimension to the treatment of
the migrants’ narratives. In my view, the first interest of these ‘mythological’ films is to facilitate a gesture of solidarity towards Greece and, more generally, towards the Mediterranean area, which has been negatively impacted by both the economic crisis and the arrival of refugees. At a moment when Europe is tending to dissociate itself from its southern countries, these films try to reconnect spectators with Europe’s Mediterranean roots through mythological allusions and narratives.
1 For Naficy (2001, 4), filmmakers of “accented cinema” are very often “situated in the interstices of cultures and film practices”. 2 For instance, Eden à l’Ouest was screened at the Berlin International festival’s closure, while Film Socialisme was selected in Cannes festival, in the ‘Un certain regard’ section.
3 By the abridged version of ‘mythological memory’, I mean a particular subset of cultural memory that involves the reactivation of myths.
4 The use of Greco-Roman heritage as foundational for European identity is the result of a historical process and must not be considered as ‘natural’. A number of scholars (Bernal 1987; Mann 1988; Hall 2003; Westphal 2016) have underlined quite clearly how the Greco-Roman imaginary was solicited at different moments in history to provide a mythical origin and a common intel-lectual framework for European unification.
5 By ‘Eurocentrism’, I refer to a perspective emphasising on Western European culture that clearly dominates in the official construction of Europe. As Cris Shore (1999, 61) points out, the official European history is “presented as the story of reason and unity triumphing over disunity and nationalism – the apotheosis of the Enlightenment project”. Such a perspective “ignores the less noble aspects of European modernity such as the history of slavery, anti-Semitism, colonialism or imperial conquest”.
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1. A Short Overview of Mythological Memory in European Art Cinema
The use of mythological memory in European art cinema is not new, no more than its connections to Southern Europe and non-European nations. We need only recall films by Pasolini such as Oedipus Rex (1967) or Medea (1969), which already established a connection between mythology, European society and North Africa. But the connection between mythological memory and immigration has become more central in the last few years; hence my analysis focuses on a series of more contemporary films.
In French cinema, the most exemplary film is undoubtedly Eden à l’Ouest (2009) by Costa-Gavras, which follows the journey of an asylum seeker through Europe using multiple references to the Odyssey. But there are other French films that adopt a similar approach. Christophe Honoré’s Metamorphoses (2014), for example, transposes Ovid’s tales into contemporary France. Even if there is no exile situation in the strict sense, the film’s heroine is named Europe and the role is played by a young girl with a migrant background. Similarly, Pascale Ferran’s Bird People (2014) connects mythological memory and migration through indirect references to Ovid. Here a young maid working at the Hilton Hotel near the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris suddenly turns into a sparrow. During her metamorphosis, she flies over a clandestine camp where homeless people are spending the night in their cars. Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme links contemporary Europe to the cultural memory of ancient Greece. The first part of the film follows a cruise ship along the Mediterranean, while the last part, “Nos Humanités”, explores Europe and its origins, notably ancient Greece: “Tragedy and democracy were married in Athens... Only one child: civil war” (Film Socialisme).6
Finally, there is the lesser-known work Mercuriales (2014) by Virgil Vernier, a filmmaker who has claimed, “Antiquity is the future”7 (Ribeton 2014). The film combines the story of a Moldavian refugee in the Paris
suburbs looking for her vanished friend with subtle allusions to Mercury and other gods of antiquity.
In other European countries, we might recall the recent films of the Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos, such as Eternity and a Day (1998) or Dust of Time (2008), where narratives of displacement are always intermingled with the memory of ancient myths.8 Angelopoulos himself comments on the interface between
memory and mythology: “In my days, Homer and the ancient tragic poets constituted part of the school curriculum. The ancient myths inhabit us and we inhabit them. We live in a land full of memories, ancient stones and broken statues” (Angelopoulos 2009, 7).
In Portugal, the recent release of Arabian Nights (2015) by Miguel Gomes confirms an ongoing interest in combining mythological and contemporary references. Even if the film refers more to Oriental tales than to Greco-Roman mythology, there is nevertheless a scene set in the ruins of a Roman amphitheater where migrants, along with other members of Portuguese society, are judged responsible for the collapse of Portugal. For Gomes, “the scene begins like a comedy and ends like a tragedy, a Greek tragedy which is shot in an amphitheater”9 (Kaganski 2015, 50).
These few examples demonstrate clearly that European and particularly French authorial cinema has a 6 My translation from French : “Tragédie et démocratie ont été mariées à Athènes (…). Un seul enfant: la guerre civile”.
7 My translation from French : “L’Antiquité, c’est le futur”.
8 For the use of myths in Angelopoulos’ last trilogy, see Stathi (2013, 77-91).
9 My translation from French: “La scène commence comme une comédie et finit comme une tragédie. Une tragédie grecque, puisque c’est tourné dans un amphithéâtre”.
23 strong connection to ancient mythology, as a source of inspiration to lend form and meaning to contemporary migratory experiences.
2. Some Characteristics of Mythological Memory in Contemporary European Film
Mythological memory belongs to the order of “cultural memory” as defined by Jan Assmann. Whereas communicative memory refers to memories going back three or four generations, cultural memory is situated out of time, located in an “absolute past” (2010, 117). Indeed, films like Eden à l’Ouest or Métamorphoses present migratory experiences by alluding to events which have no historical reality, but rather refer to a mythological and fabled past.
The use of mythological memory in contemporary French films can be specifically characterized as follows: 1. Mythological memory does not refer to a precisely established corpus of texts that correspond to
his-torical periods defined by specialists or archeologists. In these films, mythological memory is most often a heterogeneous memory that mixes references to Greek and Roman antiquity. Ovid mingles with Homer; the tale is next to the epic. In Film Socialisme, Godard refers as much to the Odyssey as to the birth of tragedy. There are obviously myths other than those of Greek or Roman antiquity (Northern myths, for instance), but within the context of this paper mythological memory is defined as memory focused on Greco-Roman mythology. This does not prevent the possibility of several films making allusions to other “deep” memories, such as Judeo-Christian memory (references to the Bible in Eden à l’Ouest) or ancient Egyptian civilization (in Godard’s Film Socialisme).
2. In the field of cultural memory, myths are part of the “canon” as defined by Aleida Assmann (2010, 100-102). The canon differs from the archive in the sense that it assembles those texts, narratives, and images that have outstanding value and significance. They are “sanctified” texts that continue to be relevant today. Narratives like the Odyssey, the Fall of Icarus or Ovid’s Metamorphoses are rein-terpreted in the light of contemporary situations, such as that of migrants or, more broadly, Europe’s economic breakdown. Texts deriving from Greco-Roman mythology are not confined to a national memory. They circulate throughout Europe10 and constitute the basis of a common culture going
beyond the borders of nation-states. However, as Stuart Hall (among other scholars) points out, this focusing on classical mythology was “accomplished, in part, by steadily detaching Greek culture from its roots in Asia and Egypt, and relocating it firmly in Europe” (Hall 2003, 40). The films considered here strive to reverse this detachment and reconnect the Greco-Roman heritage to its Mediterranean origins. For example, in Film Socialisme, travelling on a cruise ship allows Godard to intermingle different cultural memories belonging to the Mediterranean area. In the same way, Christophe Honoré (2014) in Métamorphoses explains that his decision to personify Europe as a young French girl of Algerian origin is grounded in his intent to show “a Mediterranean girl, involved in these myths from the origin — even if unconsciously” (Ferenczi 2014).11
3. Finally, mythological memory occupies a place close to the archaic. Even though Homer might seem 10 The actualization of Greco-Roman myths does not only occur in Europe. We must mention here the work of African and Ca-ribbean artists like Derek Walcott and his poem Omeros (1990). On this subject, see Graziosi and Greenwood.
24 to belong with Shakespeare and Dante in the category of the ‘ageless’, he is nevertheless situated at a greater distance in time. Here the philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s (2009) definition of the archaic leads to the realization that mythological allusions are a way of evoking the archaic from the heart of the present. “Contemporariness inscribes itself in the present by marking it above all as archaic. Only he who perceives the indices and signatures of the archaic in the most modern and recent can be contemporary” (50). From this perspective, mythological memory can be perceived as ‘archaic’ memory, meaning memory that perpetuates the “ageless” at the heart of the most contemporary phe-nomena.12 For example, faced with the hypermodernity of transit zones like stations, squats and
refugee camps, recourse to mythological memory tends to subvert the standardization of contempo-rary migration spaces normally devoted — evoking Marc Augé (1995, 78) and his concept of non-place — to “the temporary and ephemeral”. The mythological references allow several filmmakers to create contemporary stories of displacement that are “out of time,” and to produce “a singular relationship with one’s own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it” (Agamben 2009, 41).
Having sketched the major traits of mythological memory, we may now turn to examining how this memory is realized in migrant films. The use of mythological resources has two aspects: integrative and conjunctive. These two aspects are linked, but do not designate exactly the same configurative work. The integrative
dimension refers to the films’ use of mythological references to integrate the question of migrants into a
European memory that is broader in scope than national or Eurocentric memories. In parallel, the use of genre resources like the epic also provides the opportunity to connect the migrant question to other dimensions of European society, using what can be called the conjunctive dimension. Under certain conditions, mythological memory acts like a tissue, able to sew together various aspects of life today in Europe.
3. The Integrative Dimension and Intertextuality
From an integrative point of view, the films are linked to mythological memory through a series of intertextual relations. As analyzed by Gérard Genette in Palimpsests, this intertextual dimension (1997, 1-3) may arise in many ways and present variable intensities.
The films may involve simple allusions (like those appearing in Mercuriales by Vernier) or a transposition that extends itself to the entire scale of the film, as is the case in Honoré’s Métamorphoses. Some references may be unnoticed by the spectator. For example, without having read the press kit, it is difficult to detect mythological allusions to Helen of Troy in Angelopoulos’s Dust of Time. On the other hand, a film like Godard’s Film Socialisme with its multiple verbal and visual citations might discourage the spectator due to the challenge of identifying all the references.
Despite these difficulties, the principal benefit of the intertextual dimension is that it confers an ageless aspect on contemporary stories of migratory experiences. The intertextual work tends to detach migrants’ stories from the strict immanence of the present, thus granting them an exemplary value. Recourse to mythological memory allows the filmmakers to read these current experiences of migration through the lens of various Greco-Roman references (characters, narratives or situations) that are often not bound to a specific national 12 For another insight into the concept of ‘archaic memory’, see Fevry (2016).
25 context, but rather belong more deeply to a European cultural memory.
An analysis of Eden à l’Ouest by Costa-Gavras lends this reflection a more concrete form. In this film, the journey of an undocumented immigrant is interpreted in the light of Homer’s Odyssey. The intertextual references rely on the application of epic codes to the reality of migrants today: undocumented migrants may be perceived as epic heroes and Europe at once as paradise and hell.
The mention of the epic form was already present in paratextual commentaries surrounding the film’s release. Costa-Gavras, who himself is familiar with exile and left Greece at the age of eighteen to settle in France, evoked the epic concept in interviews granted to the press: “A little like Ulysses, my character crosses the sea (mine, the Mediterranean as it happens), the ordeals, the storms. He faces modern monsters and upsets the myths of our time. Except that Ulysses wanted to return to his home, whereas my character comes to try to establish his”13 (Ravanello 2008).
The reflexive dimension of the film reinforces this intertextual reading. Eden à l’Ouest maintains a real dialogue with the epic genre due to its consistent distantiation, preventing the hero’s adventures from being considered only through the filter of topicality. The narrative epic shines through the film with great clarity, especially in the outrageous nature of the hero’s adventures and the sometimes voluntarily caricatural aspect of the trials he faces along the way. Even if Elias is not a noble character, an essential trait in many epics, he nonetheless successfully completes a perilous voyage, strewn with obstacles. Washed ashore on the Sicilian coast, this undocumented man, barely able to speak French, manages to reach Paris by overcoming various ordeals. The hero reaches the heart of Fortress Europe and triumphs over the police machine in charge of protecting it.
The film also underlines famous topoi of the genre. According to Judith Labarthe (2007), the epic genre presents two major landscapes: the idyllic garden and the description of a descent into hell (ibid., 329-332). This is exactly what we experience in Eden à l’Ouest. When the hero disembarks on the Sicilian coast for the first time, he discovers a luxurious nudist camp, with people lounging on the beach, in an allegory of the Garden of Eden. Later, Elias learns of the downsides of this paradise when the hotel manager attacks him in the building’s cellars. From an allegorical perspective, the two topographical registers of the epic genre are used to describe the idea of Europe as seen from Elias’s viewpoint. The European continent, successively or simultaneously, appears to him as both Promised Land and den of iniquity, as the paradise so sought after and a descent into hell.14 Even the term ‘wonder’ (ibid., 313), used in traditional epics to designate the supernatural
prodigies that confront the hero, now receives an updated meaning: it defines Europe’s power of attraction, its enchanting status for he who has not yet landed there.
This interpretation of Eden à l’Ouest shows how mythological memory is actualised in the film, using reflexive and intertextual dialogue with key features of the epic genre. At first glance, the principal benefit of this dialogue with foundational images from the great texts of the ancient world is that it integrates the history 13 My translation from French: “Mon personnage traverse, un peu comme Ulysse, la mer (la mienne, en l’occurrence la Médi-terranée), puis les épreuves, les tempêtes. Il affronte les monstres modernes et bouscule les mythes de notre époque. À ceci près qu’Ulysse voulait retrouver son foyer et que lui, vient pour essayer d’établir le sien”.
14 In the Odyssey, Ulysses does not actually descend into hell. He makes a ritual sacrifice to evoke the dead, especially his com-panions and ancestors whose predictions can help him continue his travels. This ritual is called ‘nekya’ and should not be confused with the ‘catabasis,’ referring to a descent into an underground world.
26 of refugees into a cultural memory that transcends national contexts.
However, the use of mythological references is not enough to ensure a transnational dimension. Epic genre or ancient heroes may also be employed for national ends. For example, one viewpoint could be that the epic is a national narrative for Costa-Gavras, given its Greek origin and connection to the past of his ancestors. As he himself recognizes, “we wanted – with Jean-Claude Grumberg [the scriptwriter] – the film to be a homage to our fathers, grandfathers and all those of our generation who came to France despite the pitfalls and storms”15
(Ravanello 2008).
Despite this strong personal involvement, Eden à l’Ouest nevertheless retains a European aspect, as do other migrant films using mythological references. To understand this phenomenon, it must be stressed that mythological memory in the French authorial films analyzed here is always concerned with the excluded and destitute, ruling out the possibility of using mythological resources to celebrate the greatness of a nation. Neither Elias in Eden à l’Ouest nor the young hotel maid who turns into a sparrow in Ferran’s Bird People are noble heroes, but rather people who live on the fringes of society. Another key point is that mythological memory is very often linked to a travel narrative going beyond national borders.16 In Eden à l’Ouest and Film
Socialisme, the epic meets the road movie (or sea movie). These migrant films portray physical journeys
through Europe: from South to North in Costa-Gavras, from East to West in Godard, each journey contributing to give a broader picture of Europe, beyond the borders of the Western fortress. The last point to consider is that mythological memory has been transplanted into other national contexts. For example, Costa-Gavras shot his film in Italy, not in Greece. In Métamorphoses, Honoré transposes the Tales from Ovid into the context of French suburbs. Both films import mythological memory into other European countries and thus reinforce their transnational perspective.
4. The Conjunctive Dimension and Episodic Narratives
In addition to the integrative dimension, the interest of mythological memory is also to provide filmmakers with narrative and genre-related models that allow them to join various facets of European society together. This conjunctive dimension is most often expressed in the choice of episodic structures such as the epic or the collection of tales.
In her seminal article “Rethinking Genre”, Christine Gledhill showed how the film genre is able to connect various levels of cultural and political life. In this light, genre functions as “a connective tissue” (Kapse 2013, 147), and ensures fluidity “not only between the boundaries that divide one genre from another but also between fictional and social imaginaries” (Gledhill 2000, 240).
This reflection can easily be applied to classical genres (or stories) that are defined by their episodic narrative, meaning their ability to progress by a series of sketches, digressions or side-paths within an overall structure. The epic exemplifies such a narrative, which does not preclude a sense of closure with the hero’s homecoming. 15 My translation from French: “Nous avons voulu avec Jean-Claude Grumberg que le film soit un hommage à nos pères, nos grands-pères et à ceux de notre génération qui sont venus en France malgré les embûches et les tempêtes”.
16 In Screening Strangers (2010), Yosefa Loshitzky (2010, 17) shares a similar perspective, noting that Journey of Hope (Koller, 1990), another travel narrative, “mobilizes a mythical and epic journey about the expulsion of refugees from the Swiss Eden in an attempt to stop the exodus of poor migrants in search of the European Promised Land”.
27 Moreover, stories of the ancient gods, as they appear in Ovid’s Tales, or when they are brought together in compilations, also present a discontinuous aspect; their use in film may require a conjunctive perspective.
Films like Eden à l’Ouest, Métamorphoses and even more, Film Socialisme, juxtapose a series of sketches that could be prolonged indefinitely. For Costa-Gavras, the illegal migrant’s journey is a pretext for multiplying sequences that have an emblematic value. Similarly, Honoré multiplies narrative digressions with various mythological personages in a narrative whose only storyline is the destiny of Europe, captured by Jupiter. It is a heterogeneous logic that guides these narratives, reinforcing the connection of migratory situations to other European experiences.
In Eden à l’Ouest, Elias’s journey provides the opportunity to draw the portrait of a Europe built on fear and denial of the Other. From Southern Italy to Paris, the hero’s journey is punctuated by encounters that contribute to a rather pessimistic vision of European society. Costa-Gavras also takes advantage of the epic genre’s itinerant narration to stage sequences that have echoes in more recent history. For instance, in one sequence French villagers burn down the gypsy camp where Elias had sought refuge. This scene reveals that mythological memory can be connected with the memory of a more recent past, in this instance referring to persecutions endured by gypsies, that are still ongoing today. In Jan and Aleida Assmann’s terms, cultural memory (the Odyssey) dialogues here with a communicative (or historical) memory. The epic structure is able to connect different layers of the past, from ageless time to more recent events.
In Costa-Gavras, the story of refugees constitutes the film’s focus, but the episodic logic may also lead the migratory experience to be one experience among many in a plural narrative proposing a critical reflection on contemporary Europe. In Godard’s and Honoré’s films, the question of displacement takes place within a broader mosaic where all the parts are of equal importance.
Godard divides his Film Socialisme into three parts. The first part follows a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, passing Egypt, Odessa, Greece, Naples and Barcelona, while the last part focuses on the origins of Europe. In both parts, Godard mixes various events and temporal layers: tourists on board, a lecture by Alain Badiou on the origins of geometry, newsreels from World War Two, excerpts from movies (peplums and costume dramas), images of ancient statues, etc. Whereas the beginning and the end of the film are devoted to travel (in time and space), the middle part is more static, since Godard draws the portrait of the Martin family, a French family who owns a garage in Savoy. Here again, references to World War Two are made, since the “Martin family” was also the name of a Resistance network during the German occupation. As in Eden à l’Ouest, the film’s hybrid composition establishes a multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009, 17),17 and Godard uses the
narration of Mediterranean travel to interweave mythological references with more recent memories.
In Métamorphoses, Honoré’s main goal is to provide a transversal panorama of contemporary France through the adventures of Roman gods. Europe, the heroine, is a young French girl of Algerian descent who decides to believe Jupiter’s stories. As Honoré explains, “she feeds on stories the gods tell her; she chooses to believe them, to go and live with them, it’s not that unlikely. She chooses the gods rather than the suburbs” (de Baecque 2014).18 With Europe as a witness, the film moves from one story to another, viewing sensitive topics
17 For Rothberg (2009, 17), memory’s multidirectionality refers to “that convoluted, sometimes historically unjustified, back-and-forth movement of seemingly distant collective memories in and out of public consciousness”.
28 such as life in the suburbs, transsexuality or suicide among teenagers. Once again, this conjunctive logic is made possible thanks to classical material, which acts like a narrative net cast over various aspects of French reality.
5. A European Point of View
In conclusion, we see how mythological memory allows filmmakers to configure the narratives of migratory experiences. The integrative and conjunctive dimensions rmutually reinforce each other, inserting the theme of displacement into European cultural memory and amplifying the allegorical meaning of narratives of exile. In the films reviewed, mythological resources are used to explore the range of migration experiences in Europe today: refugees (Costa-Gavras, Pascale Ferran), but also tourists (Godard), or people with a migrant background living in a given country (Honoré).
Finally, I would like to consider the image of Europe conveyed by these films more broadly. Faced with mythological memory and its application to the migrant situation, we could contend that the films of Godard or Costa-Gavras are Eurocentric and deprived of meaning for people who have taken the path of exile. Frantz Fanon’s (1965, 38) argument was already expressed in the sixties, but it arguably matches contemporary productions perfectly: “[A]ll the Mediterranean values - the triumph of the human individual, of clarity and of beauty - become lifeless, colourless knick-knacks … simply because they have nothing to do with the concrete conflict in which the people are engaged”.
This argument could be placed in resonance with critiques that many scholars (Bergfelder 2005, 317) have directed to the European art cinema that comprises films like Film Socialisme, Eden à l’Ouest and
Métamorphoses. On the one hand, European art cinema designates an authorial cinema, with great artistic
autonomy and humanistic preoccupations. From this perspective, “‘European’ functions less as the signifier of a specific culture, and more as an abstractly supranational, and quasi-ethical framework of cultural practice” (ibid.). On the other hand, precisely due to these humanistic references and the will to share a common European culture, this cinema is also accused of elitism, and of producing a kind of cultural homogenization. In a postcolonial context, several scholars even consider that “in it is most extreme form, European art cinema can be seen to support a cultural and ethnic ‘fortress Europe’” (ibid.).
One could argue that there is a risk of using mythological memory in a Eurocentric perspective, seeking to transform the Other into a comforting archetype belonging to the mental universe of the Western European spectator. This would imply that the living conditions of refugees be cut off from any specific reality and considered as symbols or abstractions, illustrating “universal” problems such as suffering or exile. In this case, mythological memory would run the risk of reinforcing Western Europe’s pretention to represent a ‘universal’ culture and of imposing its values at the expense of alternative views of the migration question.
Taking these arguments into account is important, but they lack precision and relevance when analyzing the selected films. A crucial point to underline is that these films are contemporaries of two events that have caused disruption in the European Union since the late 2000’s: first, the increasing number of refugees arriving in Europe, particularly via Greece and the Balkans, and second, the repeated threats to exclude Greece from avec eux, ce n’est pas si invraisemblable. Elle choisit les dieux plutôt que la cité”.
29 the Eurozone because of its outstanding debts and the economic crisis affecting the country. In this specific context, recourse to mythological memory is precisely how several filmmakers have found a way to recognize their cultural debt to Greece and, at the same time, foster exchanges between Europe and the Mediterranean area by positioning Greece as a link between these two worlds. In films like Eden à l’Ouest, Film Socialisme or Métamorphoses, mythological memory reconnects Europe to a Mediterranean world that includes not only European nations but also non-European nations like Egypt (Godard) or Algeria (Honoré), countries from which many refugees originate or where they have lived for many years.
The idea of mythological memory as an aesthetic and also political response to the crisis affecting the European Union, and particularly its Mediterranean countries (Greece, but also Italy and Portugal), was already present in the films themselves, but it emerges with even greater clarity in the statements of many filmmakers. In 2010, Godard refused to present Film Socialisme at the Cannes festival, evoking “problems of a Greek type”. In many interviews, he explained that Europe owes a lot to Greece: “We should thank Greece. It’s the Occident that has a debt with respect to Greece” (Godard 2010).19 In interviews surrounding the
release of Métamorphoses, Honoré developed the same type of argument, but insisted more on the connections between Occident and Orient: “In Ovid, before meeting Jupiter, Europe had a dream where she is desired by both continents, the West and the East. I don’t know if that’s an answer, but beyond the pure pleasure of storytelling, the film is a way of refreshing the memory of Europe!” (de Baecque 2014).20 Venturing beyond
French cinema, there is also Miguel Gomes, the Portuguese filmmaker of Arabian Nights, who summarizes Godard’s position, saying, “Greece is the cradle of the Occidental civilization we share in Europe” (Kaganski 2015, 50).21
These different statements indicate that mythological memory is a cultural memory shared by various French and European filmmakers who, through this meta-memory,22 reaffirm their common position towards
the situation in Europe today. Contradicting arguments that might see an aesthetical pleasure in allusions to Greco-Roman mythologies, it seems that mythological memory has been mobilized precisely because of its political impact in denouncing Greece’s crisis and the failure of European asylum policies. In this sense, I agree with Agamben in saying that the archaic is also the most contemporary.
19 My translation from French: “On devrait remercier la Grèce. C’est l’Occident qui a une dette par rapport à la Grèce”. 20 My translation from French: “chez Ovide, avant de rencontrer Jupiter, Europe fait un rêve où elle est désirée par deux conti-nents, l’Occident et l’Orient. Je ne sais pas si c’est une réponse, mais en dehors du pur plaisir de raconter des histoires, le film est une manière de rafraîchir la mémoire de l’Europe !’’.
21 My translation from French: “La Grèce est le berceau de la civilisation occidentale que l’on partage en Europe”.
22 This shared memory can also be defined as a meta-memory. For Joël Candau (2010, 35), “meta-memory is an essential di-mension of the sense of memory inter-subjectivity. It is because we are conscious of what we share, and speak about it, that we are able to claim a shared memory.”
30
References
Agamben, Giorgio. What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays. Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009.
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Filmography
Arabian Nights [As 1001 Noites]. Dir. Miguel Gomes. Shellac, 2015. Bird People. Dir. Pascale Ferran. Archipel 35, 2014.
32
Eden à l’Ouest. Dir. Costa-Gavras. KG Productions, 2009.
Eternity and a Day [Mia aioniotita kai mia mera]. Dir. Theo Angelopoulos. Greek Film Center, 1998. Film Socialisme. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Wild Bunch, 2010.
Journey of Hope [Reise der Hoffnung]. Dir. Xavier Koller. Catpics AG, 1990. Medea. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. San Marco Production, 1969.
Mercuriales. Dir. Virgil Vernier. Kazak Productions, 2014.
Métamorphoses. Dir. Christophe Honoré. Les Films Pelléas, 2014. Oedipus Rex [Edipo re]. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Arco Film, 1967.
Sébastien Fevry is Professor at the School of Communication, Catholic University of Louvain. His research focuses on the representations of minority groups in media, with a special emphasis on French films and in-terest in mnemonic phenomena such as multidirectional and deep memories. He is the author of La comédie
cinématographique à l’épreuve de l’Histoire (L’Harmattan, 2012), “Aesthetics of Recognition and
Photo-filmic Dynamics: Remembering in the Cinema of Henri-François Imbert”, Image & Narrative 16 (2015), “Sepia Cinema in Nicolas Sarkozy’s France: Nostalgia and National Identity”, Studies in French Cinema 1.17 (2017).
