A man, both revolted and disillusioned engages on an extraordinary journey of discovery of himself through the sacred quest of mythical characters of the forest. His past love and a woman with poetic shamanic powers reveal troubling aspects of his personality which will lead him to love and to revelations.
The Wildflower is a paradigm of humanity and of myself, particularly as an artist. It is an exploration of the crisis within the human soul where the spiritual domains of dream and myth cure the wounded illusions of beauty’s wear.
Director’s statement of purpose
A visual poem by Carolyn Carlson
Dance allows me to express myself artistically and poetically. The film, The Wildflower, creates a spatiotemporal dimension thanks to unique gestures of the dancers. Gestures that trigger emotions, spiritual perceptions of the heart and mind, through the energy of the dance movements, in an imaginative visualization.
In the “Carlsonian” dance style, dreams and revelations have always been a manifestation of my visual poetry. With our evanescent personalities, I think we also belong to the cosmic realms which include a non-linear experience of the vision of a world where myths and poetry are unique to each one of us.
My work as a choreographer consists of sharing the evolution of my experiments which show us another way of seeing our own nature, processed by our thoughts, throwing us into the mystery of ourselves and in timelessness…
It is also uniting what life has separated! That is my work as a creator of images.
“The Wildflower” is a tale of initiation, a Homeric poem…
Juha, our hero, undergoes a process of transformation. We do not know how long his awakening will take as he is in the present time. He doesn’t reject the dark and mysterious side of life, but takes into account, at each stage of the story, his primeval state of mind of a lost and rebellious character. Juha ends up understanding that one has to go through profound experiences of death and terror to reach the knowledge of redemption and gratitude.
The story -“poem for a life”- will remind the audience of things they had forgotten, or never known. In clarity and vision, our hero will start to know himself, in the myth of a universal symbol, in the conscience of a man, forever searching.
In his naiveté and melancholy, my hero (a reflection of myself), goes through dreadful and mysterious ordeals throughout the film, taking great risks as he moves between reality and dreams.
The other characters allow him to penetrate their open scars since they have also lived the process of suffering and transformation to become what they are.
Carolyn Carlson, 2018
“Man is a mystery to himself, and all humankind is based on the reverence for the mystery that is man.”
Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, 1924.
Interpretation by 40 dancers and actors. Coproduction Portrait & Cie / Flair Production / Carolyn Carlson Company