Rain of the Furies-
Hermes Takes on the Brave New World
By Brad Masi
The world has all but forgotten about the Greek Gods. They
have been relegated to that frozen land of quaint old myths, vanquished to that
grand chasm between the secular material world and the realm of an absentee
Judeo-Christian God. But what if the Greek Gods still live among us,
increasingly crowded out by the din of rush hour traffic and the sprawling
ambitions of modern day global capitalism?
This provides the backdrop to Rain of the Furies, a film in which Zeus lives on with his
mistresses in a cottage atop Mount Olympus in modern-day Hawaii. His neighbors
mostly regard him as a “weird old hermit that brings down property values”.
Hermes, the Messenger God with winged feet, slugs away as a pizza delivery boy,
locked into an eternal yearning for an older time when he could be at the side
of Aphrodite and not jammed in perpetuity stuck behind traffic while making
deliveries. But Hephaestus, the God of Industry and Technology, stands alone in
his power, occupying a penthouse suite that looks down upon Mount Olympus where
he tosses enough perks to Aphrodite to keep her at his side.
The film opens with
Hermes behind a flour-dusted table-top with his Mount Olympus Pizza uniform,
lamenting, “time goes by like a luke-warm breeze when you live forever…”
Early in the film, Hermes gets a rare call for a pizza from
one of Zeus’s mistresses which can only mean one thing: Zeus is becoming
impatient and wanting to tilt the balance of power away from Hephaestus. Hermes
snakes through rush hour traffic on his delivery in scenes reminiscent of
Forest Whitiker in Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost
Dog with a soundtrack to match. Hermes laments the blight of Hephaestus’
reign: “Roads, golf courses, parking lots, vacation homes, high rises, acne
rupturing through land that was holy, revered, the object of sacrifice… the
last green on earth was covered up long ago and man moved up the mountain.”
Hermes struggles with the world that Hephaestus has created
in partnership with mortal men: “The new creation- a different world where he
is king… Hephaestus sold man his technology until he got to the top, dug up the
mountain, mixed it with money and made concrete…put a tag on everything and
sold it before anyone got around to noticing.”
In the midst of this, Hermes longs only to save Mount Olympus
and to win Aphrodite.
Rain of the Furies
presents a juxtaposition between the old ways and a world wrought by the
exploitation of science, industry, real estate development, and greed. Even the
great Gods have been subsumed to this Brave New World. But as Zeus awakens back
to his power, Hermes wonders what will happen to this world where Hephaestus
sold mortals a bill of goods, “building a new myth out of steel and concrete
that is as fragile as an egg shell.”
Hephaestus warns Zeus that if his power is taken away, “cars
will come to a screeching halt, blackouts, planes falling from the sky, utter
chaos”.
Will Zeus tilt the balance of powers? Will Hermes win back
Aphrodite? You’ll have to see the film to find out. But overall, Rain of the Furies reignites ancient
struggles and myths in the midst of a world of increasing fragility. It alludes
to a human presence that, egged on by Hephaestus, has greatly over-stepped its
ecological bounds and is already starting to feel the results of this ambition.
As Hermes observes, Hephaestus sold his vision hard “under the silent mantra
that there are no consequences.”
What will happen as the balance of power inevitably shifts
in the world and mere mortals are brought back to their more humble existence,
tossed out of Mount Olympus which has just become “the hottest real estate
ticket out there”. Will the modern day edifice of concrete, steel, and glass
dissolve in the midst of more ancient forces?
