How I'm Spending My Saturday
Depuis 2006
Today—as always on the last Saturday in January—I am teaching my most beloved course of the year: The Big Christmas Course. Even as this essay is being posted, I am speaking to an inspiring group of participants in my cozy little venue in Copenhagen. My sister creates and serves her signature sandwiches, and my mother is responsible for the cake. And since 2006, when The Big Christmas Course was first launched, my best customers wouldn’t want it any other way.
This course has become a cherished ritual: a 5-hour deep dive into a single theme with fascinating symbolic and mythological undertones—and examples from films that span the entire history of cinema. Every January over the past two decades, we have explored exciting topics such as: shaving in movies, staircases in movies, mirrors in movies, food in movies, art in movies, trains in moves, and many more.
It’s Just Water …
This year, our focus is on water in movies. Water, in all its forms—oceans, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, rain, ice, tears—is one of the most potent symbols in storytelling as well as in our dreams. Water is the essence of life, a force of nature, and a mirror of the human unconscious.
Since the early years of cinema, directors from all over the globe have used water to evoke everything from birth and transformation to danger and destruction.
Exciting Examples
In Titanic, the vast, icy Atlantic is both a symbol of human hubris and a stage for love and loss. In Jaws, the ocean transforms into a primal force of terror, tapping into our deepest fears. In The Piano, Ada journeys across the ocean from Scotland to New Zealand for an emotionally turbulent transformation, while in Hitchcock’s Rebecca, the sea surrounding Manderley becomes an ominous presence, virtually synonymous with Rebecca herself, hinting at secrets buried beneath the surface.
Water is a gateway to the subconscious and the unconscious. In Inception, it marks the boundaries between dream and reality, while in Shutter Island, it becomes symbolic of the trauma and repressed memory of the main character.
From the fantastical underwater realms and the gigantic whale of Disney’s Pinocchio to the eerie, underground swimming pool in the haunting original Cat People from 1942, water reflects the entire spectrum of our human experience: love, hope, terror, repression, transformation, and transcendence.
I’m So Excited …
I have been preparing for this big course, also by far the most demanding course of my entire year, for a long time, and needless to say I am beyond excited to dive deep into many more scenes and uncover how water flows through cinema as an archetype, connecting stories and invoking something primal within each one of us us.
Are you interested in seeing the complete list of all the movies we talked about?
Join the Conversation
I’d love to hear your thoughts! What water scenes in movies do you love? The ocean in From Here to Eternity? The Thames in Sliding Doors? Or something entirely different? Feel free to share your reflections in the comments below!