In the end, the scorpion does sting the frog because "it's in his nature." Now, this symbol is donned by the Driver proudly because he believes he is a scorpion. When the frog doubts the scorpion, fearing that it will just sting him, the scorpion suggests it wouldn’t do that because they would both drown. In this story about our inescapable natures, a scorpion asks a frog to transport it across the river.
This is a story that the Driver himself mentions to Bernie in the movie. Think about the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog. It's impossible to miss, but not everyone considers its meaning in relation to the film. The scorpion on the Driver's jacket is one of the most glaring images in the film Drive. While some might suggest that the symbol/motif of the scorpion in Drive is heavy-handed, we believe it's used quite beautifully. Since we are shown what Teddy sees, he even visually erases water from our sight, as when the female inmate is drinking water and the entire cup disappears from the shot. Notice that he gets seasick when on the water. While water brings out the truth, Teddy also resents it and fears it, if only because he's hiding from the truth. In reality, he shot her after she drowned their children. This is most striking in the memory that Teddy has created that his wife died in a fire. Whenever fire is present, whether in the cave, on a match, in the fireplace, or in a memory, we are being shown a hallucination or lie. Water represents truth or the real world, and fire represents the distorted reality or the lie Teddy wants to believe. The fire and water in Shutter Island signify to us, the audience, what vision of the world we are seeing on screen at that moment.
As you can see, these concepts are similar, and since we want to speak about both symbols and motifs, we're going to just let them be the same damn concept.Īnyhow, here are 15 Symbols You Missed in Major Films and The Deep Meaning Behind Them.įor some of you, fire and water in Shutter Island might be painfully obvious symbols/ motifs, but you may be surprised to learn that a massive portion of film fans just watch films without trying to dissect symbolism. Motifs are similar, but they are recurring, and they almost always help describe one of the main themes or ideas in the film. In basic language, symbols are things that pop up a few times throughout a film that represent something else entirely and help describe an idea or a concept. This is because these two concepts are sometimes difficult to separate and because frankly, they're similar enough that we can conflate them without offending anyone. Though we will try to avoid speaking about general film allegories and the like, we are going to conflate symbols with motifs. To be honest, we're not totally innocent in conflating literary or film devices here. We've also seen fans and critics talk about entire films being symbols for colonialism or something like that. We've seen filmmakers use symbols so heavy-handedly that we want to gouge out our own eyes. Now, symbols can also be abused, both by the filmmakers and the audiences. We get a snippet of what they set out to accomplish. If used and interpreted correctly, we can catch glimpses of the message that the filmmakers truly wanted to send. We find that symbols, and the use of symbolism is one of the subtlest ways that filmmakers can influence viewers and interpretation. Symbolism in film is one of those things that you either love or you hate, read into too much, or don’t get at all.