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Thursday, May 13, 2021

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

“Ariadne” by Jennifer Saint is, at 

first, a retelling of the Greek myth of 
Theseus, but it doesn’t stay that way 
for long. Saint has not written another 
tale of men performing great feats of 
bravery and strength, but a portrait of 
the lives left devastated in their callous 
wake. The women that fill these pages 
are painted with an incisive brush, the 
result of which is female characters 
that are full of nuance and complexity 
rarely afforded to historical women. 
Saint takes a well-known myth that 
exalts the exploits of men and draws 
from it a stunning story of female 
resilience and solidarity.

For those unfamiliar with the myth 

of Theseus, the basic premise is as 
follows: Theseus is an Athenian prince 
and demigod who travels to Crete to 
slay the minotaur, a monster that dwells 
in the labyrinth and feasts on live 
human sacrifices brought from Athens. 
The princess of Crete, Ariadne, betrays 
her father to help Theseus on this quest. 
Theseus, having freed the Athenians 
from the horror of sacrificing their 
children, goes on to become the king of 
Athens and a legendary hero. Even for 
most of us who know the story, Ariadne 

fades into obscurity as soon as Theseus 
is no longer in need of her assistance. 
Jennifer Saint is determined to change 
that — to carve a place for women 
amongst tall tales of men’s heroics and 
glory.

This book does not shy away from 

explicitly feminist themes. The early 
lives of the two female protagonists 

(Ariadne and her younger sister, 
Phaedra) are entirely defined by 
the whims of proud, power-hungry 
men, from their father King Minos to 
Poseidon himself. They feel themselves 
to be little more than tools, important 
only as a means by which to further 
the ambitions and desires of men. 
But though they know themselves to 

be helpless in the face of the world’s 
demands, they struggle to resign 
themselves to this fate. As a young 
woman, Ariadne swears to never go 
down without a fight, to never be the 
broken victim she sees in her mother: 
“I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I 
resolved. If the gods… came for me to 
punish a man’s actions, I would… wear 
that coronet of snakes, and the world 
would shrink from me instead.”

It is this resoluteness, then, that 

motivates her to help Theseus. She 
isn’t just lovestruck, as is commonly 
depicted (though she’s certainly that 
too) — she’s also desperate to claim her 
own destiny and to escape from under 
the crushing thumb of her father. She 
falls hard and fast, not just for Theseus’s 
handsomeness and bravery, but for the 
possibilities he presents to her. And 
though she is foolish in her trust more 
than once, as she readily admits in 
hindsight, she is equally fierce in her 
loyalty to her fellow women and her 
love and protection of the vulnerable 
and suffering. This is her strength, 
and though she does not wield a club 
to crush monsters or gallivant through 
cities parading her godly heritage as 
Theseus does, it easily rivals Theseus’s 
power in its own, quiet way. Ariadne 
develops into a hero in her own right, 
and in doing so she challenges our 

assumptions about who and what 
heroes have to be and want.

Phaedra, on the other hand, is 

stubborn and daring; if she had been 
born a boy, she would have been the one 
slaying monsters. She is determined 
to make her mark on the world and 
incapable of watching as it passes her 
by, even while inexorably relegated to 
the sphere of hospitality and childcare. 
Just a girl when the story begins, she, 
too, finds a way to loosen the ropes 
that bind her to her lowly station of 
“woman.” But try as they might, and 
despite their differences, each sister 
will learn in turn that they can never 
truly be free of them.

“Ariadne” toys with the heart and 

stomach. Horror, dread and anger — so 
much anger — are interspersed with 
relief and joy in a loop that grinds to a 
halt only in the very last paragraph. 
Ariadne and Phaedra feel real, even 
though 
their 
life 
circumstances 

are so fantastical. They are at once 
surrounded by gods and magic and 
torn by the same forces women across 
the world and throughout time have 
been burdened with. They know the 
unsteadiness of finding one’s own two 
feet and the determination to take 
fate by the reigns anyway. 

What the modern blockbuster can learn from ‘Interstellar’

The current state of the moden 

blockbuster can be a bit tricky to pin 
down at the moment. Due to the fact 
that most big-budget projects have 
been pushed back into the next couple 
of years, only a handful of blockbusters 
have been released over the past year 
or so. But those few releases are still 
able to key us into where the genre is 
headed. Almost all were sequels or 
remakes for existing films, and the 
reception settled around a consensus of 
“it’s good to distract from the world, but 
it could be so much more.” 

This has been a trend for a while 

now. Of the thirty most expensive 
movies ever made, just one is not based 
on a pre-existing property (though you 
could say two if you don’t count the 
Rapunzel fairytale). It is very clear what 
Hollywood’s money is being pumped 
into, and from a business perspective 
it makes sense. If you’re going to spend 
hundreds of millions of dollars making 
a film, you want to be sure people want 
to see it, and one of the easiest ways to 

do that is by basing it off of something 
that already exists and people enjoy.

It’s worked out well so far for the 

studios, as only about three of the films 
could really be considered failures (all 
by Disney who has more than made 
up the profits). They don’t really care 
that the reception among critics and 
audiences ranges from “that was bad” 
to “that was surprisingly good.” As long 
as the money keeps rolling in, they’ll 
keep putting most of their eggs in safe 
baskets.

Not to respark the Scorsese vs. 

Marvel debate, but his criticisms 
are relevant to discussions about the 
medium of film as an art form. Most 
of the money in the film industry isn’t 
currently going into art, it’s going into 
products. Studios aren’t interested in 
telling meaningful stories or pushing 
the technical limits of film, they are 
solely interested in making money. And 
when you’re solely interested in making 
money, you’re much less likely to take 
chances on films that don’t satisfy the 
largest demographic possible.

But original films that take big risks 

can be very successful. Up until 2019, 
the two highest grossing films of all 

time were “Avatar” and “Titanic”, 
two original films that pushed the 
boundaries of what was possible with 
film technology at the time. Sure, the 
hit rate might not be as high, and the 
return isn’t always going to be as much 

as an Avengers film, but if invested in 
and marketed well, these riskier films 
can be very successful commercially 
and critically.

Unfortunately, at the moment, these 

films and potential filmmakers aren’t 
being given the chance. Apart from 

James Cameron — who directed the 
aforementioned highest grossing films 
of all time, and who doesn’t appear to 
be working on any non-Avatar sequels 
in the foreseeable future — there’s 
really only one filmmaker who can get 

risky, original, big-budget films made: 
Christopher Nolan.

Whether he can still do that after the 

pandemic-induced failure of his latest 
release “Tenet” is to be determined, 
but his track record suggests that the 
big-budget features that Hollywood 

doesn’t want to make can be extremely 
successful at the box office, as well 
as thought-provoking pieces of art. 
After the success of his Dark Knight 
Trilogy, based on the characters from 
Batman comics and previous movies, 
Nolan was given a blank check to make 
whatever he wished. The first was 
“Inception”, a heist film that dealt with 
ideas of dream states and alternate 
realities. It was a smash at the box 
office, and it even found itself among 
that year’s Oscar nominees for Best 
Picture, indicating that despite its large 
budget it was able to garner a sense of 
prestige not typically associated with 
bigger, blockbuster features.

“Inception” is a fantastic film, but it 

probably falls a bit more on the side of 
“The Avengers” than “Citizen Kane.” 
That’s not a bad thing necessarily, and 
was probably part of the reason it was 
so successful, but despite all of the 
interesting things Nolan and his crew 
do with structure and visual effects, it 
still lacks the emotional resonance of 
something that Martin Scorsese might 
describe as “cinema.” 

 MITCHEL GREEN

Daily Arts Writer

“Ariadne”: The woman left behind

BRENNA GOSS

Daily Arts Contributor

Courtesy of Jennifer Saint

Design by Jessica Chiu

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