Of Wolves and Men

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Another draw to this project would be filming in Wales, it’s been a joy and I really adore the crews. They have been so supportive and allow me to do my best work especially when I’m doing some crazy scenes. Matilda is an upper middle class woman from a wealthy family. Her and her husband, Oliver, have two children. The son, who isn't present in the story, is a bit of a big success story which probably means a lot to this family as it seems there’s likely been pressure to be successful in this family. Their daughter, Lucia, who in worldly terms has been less successful and is very troubled. From when we first meet them in the car in the first scene, there is a lot of history and delicate references to the troubles that they’re bringing with them. I read Of Wolves and Men the same year I read Lopez's Arctic Dreams; the latter was a gift from my mentor and teacher, a scholar of literacy who was also a lover of the environment. I understood in the process of reading these books that it is indeed a deeply complex thing to understand wolves, or young learners, as if they were One Thing. How we can know a thing—any thing—is complex and difficult work. I very much agree with the opinion that this song is a representation of embracing your primal instincts that we all seem to have forsaken. Iwan and Sasha have fresh, young faces that are both charming and disarming. Therefore you invite them in and, without realising, you’re basically asking the devil in for a cup of tea because they are plausible as policemen, which is how they present themselves initially. By the time you start to ask questions, it's too late.

Although one wonders if the Navajo or Hopi were farming at the same time did they viewed the plants as holy. Wolves are to me magical, revered, skillful, misunderstood, beautiful creatures. Which makes it all the more shameful that we, our shitty human species, has captured, ensnared, maimed, tortured, poisoned, slaughtered and almost completely decimated the wolf populations of the world over. What is the matter with us??????? Why are we so intent on grounding animal species into submission and degradation???????The last part focuses on medieval European folk tales about wolves. Compared to Native Americans, European stories show a conspicuous absence of actual wolves, a reflection of ecology but more so of modes of production and religious politics. The medieval compendium of knowledge about natural history, the physiologus, is full of folk remedies premised in religious allegory. It makes explicit what is now a post-modern revelation for young environmentalists: our ideas about nature are social projections, not Truth (a point Lopez makes subtly by placing scientific perspectives on the same playing field as the rest).

Nuvole all'orizzonte: qui analizziamo l'inserimento del lupo nei miti dei nativi americani, la sua origine e il suo significato simbolico.

As illuminating as the book is on its chosen subject(s), Lopez frequently reminds the reader of just how little genuine knowledge we have about wolves, or wild animals in general for that matter, and he has included a quote from Henry Beston that I think perfectly encapsulates what Lopez himself is all about: Today, the killing continues. Problem humans are using dynamite to blow up predator dens, and shooting them from planes and helicopters. They stake out dogs in heat, and then beat to death the wolves that mount them. Why? Why? Why? One of the things that was really important to me was to make sure that dynamic between Honey and Molina works. I've always wanted to work with Iwan because he's done such fantastic work on screen, theatre and in so many different genres too.

This character was really about being as honest as possible and honest about fear. You have a TV idea of how you would try to protect your family and when you’re truly desperate and scared, so we’ve really had to imagine what we would do in those moments. It’s been interesting when we’re filming as I’ve often had to stop for a moment and think what these two guys have done to Oliver and his family and I think by now you have to come through and you can’t stay frightened for all that time, so as a result you become quite dangerous. You’ve got nothing to lose if you think you’re going to die. Imagine a wolf moving through the northern woods. The movement, over a trail he has traversed many times before, is distinctive, unlike that of a cougar or a bear, yet he appears, if you are watching, sometimes catlike or bearlike. It is purposeful, deliberate movement. Occasionally the rhythm is broken by the wolf's pause to inspect a scent mark, or a move off the trail to paw among stones where a year before he had cached meat." Indians perception of wolves) ..the line between Indians and wolves may fade, not because Indians did not perceive the differences but but because they were preoccupied with the similarities. PG 98 We have never worked together before but we just hit it off and it's been great considering when you see them on screen they don't really like each other. Well, Honey doesn’t really like Molina at all. It’s been a real joy to play around and just explore these scenes. We had a bit of freedom to switch things up a little bit so there's been times when it's been unpredictable and instinctive and we both kind of just go along with it.When I first read the script, I read all six episodes in a day – I just couldn’t put them down. As I was reading, I would be thinking “I really want to play that scene” and then I’d read the next one and think the same. When I got to episode five, I read this particular scene and I just instantly thought, “right, I’m in”. I’ve been looking to play a different kind of character and I just loved Molina’s journey. It’s been nice to do the comedy, stupidity and lightness of him. But this is not why Lopez turns to other viewpoints. Native American mythology, hunters' tales, and Christian folk legend aren't inferior alternatives to science, though they are not treated as epistemological equals either. By presenting these four viewpoints on the wolf, Lopez investigates human imagination of the wolf, its social construction by these four distinct societies. With the wolf as a fixed point of reference, Lopez is able to compare and contrast the symbology and sentiment humans have historically mapped onto nature – the contrast between European and Native American cultures of course stand in stark contrast, while the contemporary viewpoint is in some ways even more distinct from its historical roots. We assume that the animal is entirely comprehensible and, as Henry Beston has said, has taken form on a plane beneath the one we occupy. It seems to me that this is a sure way to miss the animal and to see, instead, only another reflection of our own ideas.” The thing I found most interesting about this, for better or worse, was its relevance to modern genre fic tropes. I saw in werewolf stories the missing piece that explained what the Sith are in Star Wars, and by extension, what villains and mooks in comic books and fantasy are in general. They are the legacy of the embattled Christian worldview. Christians in 1100s Europe didn't, couldn't, see wolves as just animals going about their lives as God made them, and much less could they see the poor and afflicted as people. The Sith, villains in general, are incarnations of evil, servants of the Devil, because they are stories about good conquering evil: reenacting the central drama of our culture is their ultimate raison d'etre.

When I read the scripts, I found it really hard to put them down – I wanted to get to the next episode but I was so frightened when I was reading them, I had to go upstairs and read them beside my sleeping husband because I was too scared to be sitting alone in the kitchen. I think Megan has done a brilliant job with these scripts, really skillful and it’s incredibly challenging to keep everybody's stories alive through six episodes but she has really kept us on our toes. Being able to play characters in these very extreme states was a big enticement as well. We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

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Of Wolves and Men, by Barry Lopez, explores many facets of the long and tempestuous relationship between humans and wolves. Sadly, in an age of infinite information and growing eco-awareness, many people still remain crippled by an overwhelming, totally irrational hatred of wolves. They want them all dead. Now.