The Rebound

Yesterday I finished reading Women Who Run with the Wolves and feel totally enriched by it. One of the last stories Clarissa Pinkola Estes shares in it is The Handless Maiden - an archetypal tale of loss and recovery that another Jungian analyst (Robert A. Johnson) identifies as the feminine version of The Fisher King. It hit home with me. I literally dreamed of confronting the ghost of my confusion.

Here's The Handless Maiden blurb (in contemporary terms):

A naive young woman makes a deal with the devil for a life of ease (marries the wrong guy or other unwise choice) only to have her hands chopped off for not complying with the soul-sucking arrangement (she is crippled emotionally). Too wounded to stay but to hurt to function in the world she wanders into a transformative place where she marries a guy who loves her unconditionally but can't be with him/reap her reward until she sharpens her senses.
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As myths that have survived through millenia in various forms, The Handless Maiden and The Fisher King speak in symbolic language that's hard to understand in today's world. Estes and Johnson readily provide these insights. The loss of hands, for example, symbolizes an inability to use the old ego-structures that got her into trouble in the first place. So she is really better off without them. Later in the story, the good guy she ends up with gives her a pair of silver hands, which symbolize a newfound ability to reach into the subconscious.

You can see how this "fairy tale" is dealing with some very grown up issues and most of us can relate. The blurb (brief story summary) you see above is my interpretation based on the Jungian analysis. My post-Handless Maiden dream gave me the idea that "the rebound" is arguably the concept of the decade. If the times dictate the tales, then there's plenty of room for more movies that show us how to come back triumphantly from devastating loss.

The trouble with most versions of this ancient story is that they focus on the wounding and the wandering but no longer contain what Estes' suspects was once a matrilineal prescription for recovery that originated with the goddess traditions. And there's the rub. Estes does say that in maiming stories like this one, the protagonist must perform a series of tasks before he/she is made whole again.

Can you write THAT story? A friend of mine asked me and it got me to thinking. Can I? Maybe I NEED to. As far as screenplays go, here's how it will happen. Somebody in a position of power at the studio level will see the potential this story has to resonate with the masses and they'll adapt the fairy tale or look for something like it or based on it.

This story is pretty abstract in it's purely fairy tale form. It's full of mythic characters like a recurring devil (a Christianized version of the predator), ghosts, spirit guardians and animated trees. These symbols may be why it has been overlooked for so long. That and the fact that female-driven stories are only JUST beginning to find their footing. It doesn't fit the animated feature bill but with the spate of live-action fairy tale adaptations these days, somebody ought to take a look.

The Fisher King was adapted to film in 1991 by Richard LaGravanese and directed by Terry Gilliam. It sets the story in modern day New York and casts the fisher king as a suicidally depressed DJ(Jeff Bridges) who finds redemption by helping a delusional homeless man (Robin Williams) search for the Holy Grail. I know, it sounds pretty "out there" but in fact, The Fisher King is part of the Grail legend.

In any case, the movie was eccentric in the extreme (as you might expect from Gilliam) and even though it was nominated for a best screenplay Oscar, it is not my favorite LaGravanese film. He shines most brilliantly in his depiction of female characters. Whatever your thoughts on the film, it wasn't the mainstream, PG-rated come-back film I'm suggesting Handless Maiden could be in the right, er, hands. LaGravanese may very well be the scribe to do it.

Image Credits: Woodblock print and photo by Jaclyn Atkinson and The Fisher King movie poster from TriStar.