Hell and Heaven: Film Interpretations of Images in the Context of Mental Representations

The idea of applying the experience of cognitive analysis to visual works of art served as a prerequisite for studying the mental representations of hell and heaven on the basis of the most vivid cinematic images. Two films — “What Dreams May Come” (V. Ward, USA, 1998) and “Heavenly Judgement” (A. Zvantsova, Russia, 2011—2014) — were chosen as the research material. The center of scientific interest is the cognition of the “inner man” through art. The article outlines the trajectory of the development of individual and collective artistic interpretations of the afterlife within Christian culture. It is argued that the concept of hell has spread directly through objects of verbal and non-verbal creativity. This has significantly distorted the original doctrine of life as a path of spiritual transformation. By the will of man, the “infernal picture of the world” embraced the sphere of the Earth and was embodied in reality. At the turn of the 20—21 centuries, in the conditions of rapid technical evolution, there is a reassessment of metaphysical experience. A cognitive analysis of two directorial concepts — heaven and hell as a state of consciousness (V. Ward) and as a fictitious form of life (A. Zvantsova) — reveals an important qualitative change. It consists in the transformation of the concepts of the inner world in relation to the traditional vertical structure “heaven — earth — hell”. In the modern cognitive model, “hell” is located between “heaven” and “earth”. In the boundaries of the inner world (soul) hell directly intersects with or absorbs paradise, and heavenly paradise is practically absent. As a result of comprehending the screen images of heaven and hell in the context of the established mental representations, an updated picture of ideas about postmortem existence and the nature of the soul is formed.

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