MovieChat Forums > Another Woman (1988) Discussion > Hope - Marion's 'Archaic Torso'?

Hope - Marion's 'Archaic Torso'?

posted 12 years ago by lobstersquad
2 replies | jump to latest

Although only briefly mentioned, Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" seems to be a central metaphor of the film: it foreshadows Marion's epiphany and seems to describe the relationship between Marion and Hope. The poem describes a life-changing reaction Rilke has to a sculpture (or rather a fragment of a sculpture). He feels as though it sees through him and exposes him. His encounter with the work leads him to want to "change [his] life".

Marion's "Archaic Torso" is Hope. Like Rilke's "Torso", Hope exposes and sees through Marion. She shakes Marion's core when she describes Marion to her psychologist. When Marion overhears Hope's description of her to the psychologist, Marion has a sort of a epiphany and decides to make great changes in her life. This is exactly what the Apollo's torso does for Rilke. To further this connection, Hope is subtly alluded to being like an artwork as she shares the name of the Klimt painting she is shown having the cathartic reaction to (Interestingly Marion's mother is mentioned to have a similar reaction to the Rilke poem), and Marion also first meets Hope in an antique store, and finds her amongst other art objects.

It's little details like this that make Woody Allen movies great. He so subtly mentions the Rilke poem, yet it is so core to the entire story.

ETA: I have posted the poem below. The last two lines describe the narrator's reaction to the sculpture. Others have translated the line "for here there is no place that does not see you" as "for its searing gaze penetrates your soul". I prefer the second "looser" translation of the line as I feel it more clearly expresses how the sculpture "sees through" or reveals the narrator's/viewer's true self. The line that mentions the "dark center where procreation flared," seems subtly evocative of Hope's pregnancy, further linking her to the Torso.

"Archaic Torso of Apollo"

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

[–] Squeeth2 12 years ago

I quite enjoyed the way that the anonymous (beige) woman, who seemed to be a blank slate on which everyone else wrote their script, turned out to be living the same sort of life as them but inside-out.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 12 years ago

I find your post interesting and would like to add that, unlike her mother, Marion does not feel the poem but relates to it in an intellectual way until she finds the marks on the page that suggest her mother cried when reading the poem. I believe the poem connects her with her mother and the woman dying inside, like the caged panther. The poem id her journey back to her mother, she has been too attached to her father and is values, and her own womanhood. Hence the desire to have had a child that emerges later and contrasts to the very 'rational' scene where she tells her first husband that she aborted their child.

Keep silent unless what you are going to say is more important than silence.