As Professor Dumbledore prepares his students to enter a magical hedge maze – the concluding task in the film of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – he gives them a warning. “People change in the maze,” he explains. “Be very wary. You could just lose yourselves along the way.” There is an interesting difference between the novel and the film version: in the book, the maze is filled with obstacles and monsters, like the mythical maze created by Daedalus at Knossos, where Theseus killed the Minotaur. In the movie, the maze itself is the monster: shifting, unpredictable, potentially lethal.
Charlotte Higgins, chief culture writer for the Guardian, has been obsessed by labyrinths and mazes since a childhood trip to Knossos. The difference between the two kinds of puzzle is not concrete: “Some authorities say that the labyrinth has a single winding, convoluted route that often seems to turn away from the centre, whereas the maze has forking paths and choices and contains the possibility of getting lost. In fact, this strict distinction, though useful in its way, is a relatively modern one, apt to break down.” It is, perhaps, the maze that is more troubling to us: “What frightens me more than the wrong turns I have taken during my life are the right turns, the ones I so nearly didn’t take. What if I hadn’t gone to that place, on that day, and met that person, that person who now brings me happiness? Tug at a thread and everything could unravel.”
Continue reading...from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LNUwZk
Comments
Post a Comment