Refuge of Dragonflies (2008)
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Refuge Essay
The short film “Refuge of Dragonflies” is a modern multi-cultural adaptation of one chapter of Victor Hugo’s classic “Hunchback of Notre Dame” written, directed, edited, and produced by Michael O’Rourke. It was filmed on location in West Palm Beach in May and June of 2008. Hugo’s novel, originally published in 1831, is in public domain.
Hounded by depression, rage, and survival guilt, the street poet Chancez wills himself into states of exhaustion and ecstasy, building a refuge with words—poetry in defense of civil and human liberty. He offers his poetry as shelter to every stripe of human creativity in every color he imagines might hear or read it. But who’s listening to an unknown Poet who lives in an industrial dumpster?
Heaven sees him struggle with his well-intentioned delusion, takes mercy, and hurls a messenger at him. The messenger is the message—Esmeralda, a “celestial street dancer,” the Poet’s Muse in the flesh, and she’s being hunted down by Father Frollo, assisted by his “monster” Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Hugo’s title. When Chancez creates a diversion, Esmeralda escapes, but so do Frollo and Quasimodo.
After the collision of Poet, Muse, and the Predators, Chancez is literally pulled out of the trash heap by Moon Dog, a blind street Prophet and guardian of Esmeralda. Moon Dog puts Chancez on trial in the Court of Miracles, pushing the poet to engage in his fate—not write about it, not protest about what others are doing, but live his hero’s journey. “Be here now.” The Prophet gives him one last opportunity to prove his humanity, to prove he is at least a pickpocket. When he fails at this basic and basest of occupations, the Prophet pronounces a sentence of death by hanging, which I take to mean the death of the trash heap of his ego—an absolute necessity if he is to have a fighting chance against the Predators in the future. As the noose tightens, Esmeralda, his Muse, miraculously appears, and performs a belly (rebirth) dance and agrees to take Chancez for her husband for four years.
Though Chancez is ecstatic about his escape from death into the arms of his Muse, he soon learns he is fated to be her husband in name only. She introduces him to her Dragonflies, orphans whom she has rescued from the streets. Esmeralda keeps Chancez at a distance physically, while urging him to forge his poetry anew in defense of the oppressed. She leaves him in the courtyard of her refuge asking himself: “Have you saved my life to break my heart?”
This is a story that interlaces the archetypes of dreams with earthbound street people, not unlike the phantasmagoria found in the pages of Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” The making of “Refuge” was very nearly a waking dream, in which I encountered obstacles; made deals with tricksters; shed light on shadow figures inside and out. The film is an attempt to perfectly match universal aspects of the psyche—The Poet, The Muse, The Prophet, The Twisted High Priest [or Predator Mind], and The Monster with the dirt-under-the-fingernails humans called Chancez, Esmeralda, Moon Dog, Frollo, and Quasimodo.
Impossibly, ephemeral and iridescent Dragonflies hold the whole thing together, like a fairytale.
Hounded by depression, rage, and survival guilt, the street poet Chancez wills himself into states of exhaustion and ecstasy, building a refuge with words—poetry in defense of civil and human liberty. He offers his poetry as shelter to every stripe of human creativity in every color he imagines might hear or read it. But who’s listening to an unknown Poet who lives in an industrial dumpster?
Heaven sees him struggle with his well-intentioned delusion, takes mercy, and hurls a messenger at him. The messenger is the message—Esmeralda, a “celestial street dancer,” the Poet’s Muse in the flesh, and she’s being hunted down by Father Frollo, assisted by his “monster” Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Hugo’s title. When Chancez creates a diversion, Esmeralda escapes, but so do Frollo and Quasimodo.
After the collision of Poet, Muse, and the Predators, Chancez is literally pulled out of the trash heap by Moon Dog, a blind street Prophet and guardian of Esmeralda. Moon Dog puts Chancez on trial in the Court of Miracles, pushing the poet to engage in his fate—not write about it, not protest about what others are doing, but live his hero’s journey. “Be here now.” The Prophet gives him one last opportunity to prove his humanity, to prove he is at least a pickpocket. When he fails at this basic and basest of occupations, the Prophet pronounces a sentence of death by hanging, which I take to mean the death of the trash heap of his ego—an absolute necessity if he is to have a fighting chance against the Predators in the future. As the noose tightens, Esmeralda, his Muse, miraculously appears, and performs a belly (rebirth) dance and agrees to take Chancez for her husband for four years.
Though Chancez is ecstatic about his escape from death into the arms of his Muse, he soon learns he is fated to be her husband in name only. She introduces him to her Dragonflies, orphans whom she has rescued from the streets. Esmeralda keeps Chancez at a distance physically, while urging him to forge his poetry anew in defense of the oppressed. She leaves him in the courtyard of her refuge asking himself: “Have you saved my life to break my heart?”
This is a story that interlaces the archetypes of dreams with earthbound street people, not unlike the phantasmagoria found in the pages of Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” The making of “Refuge” was very nearly a waking dream, in which I encountered obstacles; made deals with tricksters; shed light on shadow figures inside and out. The film is an attempt to perfectly match universal aspects of the psyche—The Poet, The Muse, The Prophet, The Twisted High Priest [or Predator Mind], and The Monster with the dirt-under-the-fingernails humans called Chancez, Esmeralda, Moon Dog, Frollo, and Quasimodo.
Impossibly, ephemeral and iridescent Dragonflies hold the whole thing together, like a fairytale.
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