22 Mar The Alchemy of Sulfur
I’ve written and spoken frequently about the impossibility of finding love when lost in “the projection of the Dream Lover,” — not a phrase I commonly use but was thusly stated by one of the characters in Antero Alli’s spellbinding, evocative film The Alchemy of Sulfur.
Hope longs for love and is unhappy with her current, ordinary boyfriend. She writes a romantic short story starring her ideal man, her Dream Lover. In addition to this fantasy creation, she meets a man in a tea house on whom she immediately and completely projects her imaginings. By the end of the film both of these men, the character in her story and the tea-house man, turn out to be sterile, incapable of the fire (sulfur) needed to sustain life-giving connection.
But before Hope realizes the inevitable failure of “love” of this type, she is mentored by two charismatic, archetypal Wise Women, characters rarely portrayed outside Jungian-inspired nonfiction. These two mysterious women decide to initiate and help awaken Hope who has plaintively stated she doesn’t know who she is. “You are a sorcerer of words; you are under your own spell repeating your same story,” one of them tells Hope. Love needs to be alchemically transformed.
In the film, we witness two powerful shamanic rituals; the one that ends the film is a breathtaking scene of a man dancing to haunting music, burning, consumed in flames. Through the fire of desire and the mentoring of older women, Hope comes to realize that her dreams are barren, and the fecundity of life is to be found with the real, embodied, human being next to her who has been there all along.
At a time when few artists are staying in touch with the Mystery, Alli’s film enchants the viewer with a lyrical, ethereal portrayal of the beauty of shadows and the potential aliveness of all that is hidden. In fact, one of the characters states that it is what we cannot see that connects us all.
If you are into personal and spiritual growth, you will be moved by the film’s message and the portrayal of Hope’s journey to greater awareness. If you are visually and artistically inclined, you will sit in awe at every artistically-arranged frame. If you live inside both these perspectives, this is your movie.
© 2023 Catherine Auman
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