Director: Skyler Muller
Writer: Skyler Muller
Cast: Jeremiah Fleming, Fenix Sersansie, Nicolas Nunez, Jos Timmerman, Boaz Andela, Brechtje Meijer
Running time: 13mins
The story of Icarus is something I previously took for granted. With all the truisms about flying too close to the sun that have emerged from it, I would suggest it’s one of the most pervasive Greek myths in everyday modern life. Writer-director Skyler Muller has commendably brought something new to it, though. Or at least, they emphasise something mainstream retellings of the story do not touch upon.
The film opens with Daedalus (Jeremiah Fleming) and his son Icarus (Fenix Sersansie) being imprisoned by King Minos (Jos Timmerman) on a CGI approximation of ancient Crete. In garbled expository dialogue, the elder captive exclaims that this is unacceptable as he is “the great inventor Daedalus”, while Minos bellows that he will be “invincible” with Daedalus unable to leave his side.
The latter part of the story is clearly the part that Muller is interested in telling, but this awkward and abrupt way of inserting the reasons for the father and son’s captivity is superfluous – it could have worked as an opening text-crawl. It seems this was not the direction Muller opted to take, for the sake of inserting a comedic beat here. As the mad king gestures vaguely at his guards, the kind of movement you would expect tightly drilled operatives closest to a head of state to innately understand and act upon, actors Boaz Andela and Brechtje Meijer shoot each other bemused looks. After a moment of winking to the audience at the absurdity of the moment, Minos makes it explicit that he wants them to arrest the old man and the child, obviously.
Placed inside a prison cell (where he can’t hammer on the door as you might expect because it is overtly made from cardboard) Daedalus instead begins to plan a daring escape. All he needs is some feathers…
Stepping in to provide them is Apollo (standout performer Nicolas Nunez), who we learn is in love with Icarus. This is the most interesting take on the story, as it suggests the inevitable ending, which we know is coming, may not simply be a lesson about pride or humility. That’s the reading we are used to – but here, it seems that flying close to the sun is also a metaphor for living as your authentic self, in a time actively hostile to anything beyond the straight, white, norms of society’s dominant ideology.
The issue is that the relationship is severely underexplored. Exactly how Apollo and Icarus know each other is a mystery, while their only direct encounter tells us nothing about what initially sparked their desire to be united with each other. Unfortunately, this may be because Muller felt obliged to tell more of the conventional story – with a lengthy segment where Daedalus crafts two sets of ‘wings’ from feathers and candle wax.
But again, that’s largely superfluous; in this case, because it’s something which most viewers attracted to the Icarus name in the first place will probably know – and frankly, be a little bored by. It is surely more important here to provide detail to the aspects of the story that have been added in for a fresh message to its modern audience.
Muller does deliver a nice final touch to that end. After Icarus does exactly what we knew he would do, and fly too close to the sun, melting the wax holding his wings together, we see a bereft Apollo – the god of poetry – who is consoled by some particularly beautiful words from Oscar Wilde.
Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
is never to feel the burning light.
Wilde wrote his Icarus as someone who spent his life being persecuted for his sexuality. In that context, a flight to freedom at all costs transforms from an act of carelessness and folly, into one of passionate defiance, and authenticity. The gift of life is meaningless if we have to squander it, pretending to be something we are not.
It is an unexpectedly moving conclusion to Muller’s movie, and while it is a welcome surprise, the problem I feel is that it is just that. A surprise. While there have been moments where these ideas and emotional peaks have been hinted at, they often take a back seat to other aspects of the film. Caught between a multitude of tones, Muller seems unsure whether they want to aspire to a sword-and-sandal epic, an emotive LGBT+ drama, or a Monty Python spoof of those genres. This is particularly frustrating, because Icarus is able to deliver on all three fronts, but ultimately falls short in its tightly confined run-time.
To more effectively deliver on their vision, Muller would probably have been well advised to drop at least one of the three previously mentioned categories. Using Greek mythology to tell a story about unspoken desire, and the dangers faced by those who dare to live freely as themselves, might have worked better if it had more space to explore those themes, in place of the comedic exchanges of the guards, for example.
At the same time, any and all of the goals Muller was aiming for here might have been better served if they hadn’t lumbered themselves with worrying about how things would look in post. Building an entire film around greenscreen backgrounds and computer imagery is a sure-fire way to create a sterile and uninspiring blockbuster – leaning heavily on how things will look, rather than sharpening up scripts, or focusing on the tempo and intonation of the actors in the moment – and trying to emulate that as a filmmaker outside the studio system risks negating the magic at the heart of independent cinema. Working out creative ways of getting around budgetary limitations (especially for a one-or-two-person production) often leads to innovative and entertaining storytelling – it gives audiences something they are increasingly craving for: something new.
The new aspect at the heart of this story could have worked without us being able to see any of the roughly-rendered computer-generated sequences. While they still have more charm than the AI-generated nightmare fuel we’ve been inflicted with recently, it’s still unnecessary. The flight and fall, in particular, only needed to be hinted at. Meanwhile, the setting of ancient Greece may have proven more of a distraction than necessary – the entire story could have been lifted into a modern setting, and had the same impact, but without the viewer’s eye constantly tracing the outline of an actor’s head against the obvious greenscreen scenery behind them, or trying to work out which doors are digital, and which are made of paper.
Icarus is a film which has flashes of wonderful intent, and poetic delivery. Frustratingly, though, its best qualities are hamstrung by a belief that it still needs to explicitly retell a story many of us already know – or to inject a comedic tone where one is not required. As wonderful an idea as using Icarus to critique a new era of LGBT+ oppression is, then, it never reaches the heights its illustrious name promises.