Megan Geers- Cold Fever Blog

At the beginning of the film Cold Fever, Atsushi is just a regular Japanese business man who thinks nothing of sacred space or ritual of any kind. I can relate to this because this is my mentality completely. His parents die in Iceland and his grandfather says he owes it to his parents to go to this river in Iceland and perform the appropriate ritual for the dead. He declines of course, because he is ignorant of just how much it means. But like it says in the Journey symbol handout, there is always divine intervention and even before Atsushi begins his journey this is true. He is practicing golf in his room and the ball hits the remote which turns on the last video his parents sent him from Iceland. Then he finds it tough to refuse so he hops a plane to that destination. Here’s where the journey actual begins.
Atsushi meets a lot of interesting people on his journey including some convict Americans, singing Icelandic cowboys, a crazy screaming fairie lady, a lady who takes pictures to commemorate her life, an old couple who help him change his tire, and an old man who has prophetic dreams. And like it says in the handout some hinder his journey, like the Americans and some are major helpers like the prophetic old man (which is also a major point in the journey symbol reading about the narratives). I think the old man is possibly a divine figure making itself known in human form, I mean he knew Atsushi had finish his journey (cross the bridge) alone. Also the fairie lady is possibly the land showing itself to him in its own way. In the end, Atsushi realizes that Iceland is more then just a cold wasteland, it has a magic about it. Through his journey he has embraced being in a sacred place.
As for the axioms of Lanes’, Iceland seemed to be helping Atsushi on his journey, in a manner of speaking. The place itself is what made it sacred, because he would never have had the same experience if he had gone to New York City to perform the ritual. It would have been different. The second axiom is clear cut, Atsushi made the river extraordinary by performing the burial ritual for his parents there. This also opened his eyes to the fact that Iceland itself was made extraordinary through his journey; whereas at the beginning when he thought it was just a cold weird country. In the third axiom it is also clear, at the beginning of the movie Atsushi was treading upon sacred space without entering it because he was not fully embracing his reason of being there. He looked at being in Iceland as an obligation and he just wanted to get it over with. But once he was with the old prophetic man toward the end he began to have dreams about the land and even started to see it in a whole new light (the scene where he’s just looking out at the landscape and they do a close up of his face). And the fourth axiom I think is best represented by Atsushi’s dream about the spirits drifting over the snow. It shows it is not just a local spiritual place it is also a link to the spirit world which in most stories is a whole different realm thus making the terrain universal.
I thought the movie was a little slow for my taste, but only because I’m the action movie type. But it was very relevant to class and I probably would have never watched it otherwise. So it’s good that I’ve seen it because it kind of forces me to broaden my horizons, which helps my experiences become less limited in the end.