What sort of film is ‘The Fugitive Stag’? A perfect mix of the brutal realism and ethos of Apocalypse Now (1978), with a sprinkling of Excalibur’s (1981) myth and magic, Tarkovsky’s “seamless weaving of time, dream and meaning”, and an infusion of BBC TV’s Peaky Blinders (2013-19).
“YOU LIKE THAT KIND OF BEAUTY?” Madame Epanchin
“SUCH BEAUTY IS POWER” responded her cultivated daughter Adelaida, a painter … “ONE COULD TURN THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN WITH BEAUTY LIKE THAT”
“IS IT TRUE, PRINCE, YOU ONCE SAID. “IT IS BEAUTY THAT WILL SAVE THE WORLD?” Hippolite Terentiev
From ‘The Idiot’ 1868-69
The image of the severed head still haunts me, though maybe ‘haunt’ isn’t the right word. I find it comforting, in a strange sort of way. Even now I can hear the raucous belly-laugh, mirrored in Medb’s smiling face. A face forever frozen in time.
Everything happened so quickly. I don’t remember how long I lay unconscious.
What I do remember is crawling to safety and the shock of seeing Medb’s eyes staring at me. Medb’s blood was everywhere. Her blessed, rose-coloured blood covered me like a liquid shroud. I could even taste it on my lips, and feel it running down my beard. I felt so alive! But soon her blood was the smell of death. Death mingled with car oil.
Although my eyes were a blur, some of my other senses were working overtime, trying to make sense of my new environment:
Creaking metal.
Burnt rubber.
The wind in the trees.
Then silence.
And in the silence, three drops of blood fell on my forehead in slow motion …
Medb’s Epiphany
Medb was not part of my original story, which goes back many a decade. When she did appear, it wasn’t to be later on in Guy’s adventure, as I had planned, when she would travel with him to the denouement. Her epiphany would be at the very beginning, when she would be decapitated after a few minutes of appearing on screen!
I was devastated.
I didn’t want her to be killed off at the start, and ‘fought’ the idea for about a year.
Then I realized that writing the story of the fugitive stag was more that ‘just a story.’
It was an initiation. A shamanic journey into the mystery of Goddess, the Eternal Feminine. After her decapitation Medb became my Muse, the creative life-blood, and, consequently, the Patroness of my Screenplay PLUS project. She is the ‘golden string’, or is it a ‘blood-red string’, that flows throughout the story from beginning to end.
Unlike Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’, which ends with the horrific scenes of a ‘god-monster’, violence and primitive sacrifice, ‘The Fugitive Stag’ opens with an apocalypse, the horror of a bloody decapitation and the death of an all too real, (yet mythical) ‘Edvard Munch’s-Madonna-cum-Medusa-like’ figure … Medb – an ex-Irish Abbess.
Unlike Dante’s ‘Inferno’, to gaze at this Medusa (or to have her look at you) is to be transformed. Guy’s horrific encounter with monstrosity and dazzling beauty does not paralyze him. On the contrary, the horror, in alienating him from all that was ‘familiar’ in his life, becomes an act of grace which leads to his eventual redemption.
1 The brutal realism and ethos of F. F. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1978)
2 John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981): although ‘Stag’ is rooted in our modern world, as a Celt, I have always been fascinated by the mythical, and the intimate proximity of the ‘Otherworld’.
3 In addition to Tarkovsky’s protagonists always undergoing a spiritual crisis, his films are not only a ‘seamless weaving of time, dream and memory’, but are also full of images of great beauty.
4 The UK, BBC TV’s Peaky Blinders (2013-19) is an important contemporary influence, not least because of its strong characters and story-line as well as its original blend of ‘historical drama’ and contemporary music.
Peaky Blinder’s ‘darkness’ is too one-sided, because ‘Stag’ isn’t just about the high contrast between light and dark. ‘Stag’ is about the interplay and balance between opposites, especially beauty and violence, compassion and barbarity, patriarchal religion and the goddess. In ‘Stag’ light is used to ‘soften the edges’ and thus, at times, reduce the contrast between opposites, in order to introduce a sense of calmness to a scene. In a violent and ugly world, the presence of this calmness, or ‘beauty allied with grace’, is an important element in ‘The Fugitive Stag’.
What sort of film is ‘The Fugitive Stag’? A perfect mix of the brutal realism and ethos of Apocalypse Now (1978), with a sprinkling of Excalibur’s (1981) myth and magic, Tarkovsky’s “seamless weaving of time, dream and meaning”, and an infusion of BBC TV’s Peaky Blinders (2013-19).
He lost a rare carving but found an even rarer beauty!
In a world gripped by apocalyptic ‘Goddess Mania’, a maverick priest on a personal quest, is drawn into the world of high fashion and celebrity, and a religious cabal ‘hell-bent’ on preventing a global beauty icon from fulfilling her destiny to re-fashion the world and save it from a dystopian future.
An epic story of love, beauty, religious fanaticism and a secret for which even the most pious would kill, to prevent the world from discovering.
Goddess Apocalypse Unveiled: Beauty will save the World
My hope is to link up with people who are not only interested in films but also curious enough to follow my quest to find an innovative director or producer … and much more!
An adventure that honours my Celtic native shamanism.
I suppose The Fugitive Stag could be sub-titled ‘The Adventures of a modern day Shaman’ …
The Fugitive Stag 