[Lee Jong-gil's Film Reading] What 'Moon Knight' Portrays as the Liberation of the Soul

Collision of Distinct Personalities Materialized in Space
Borrowing from Egyptian Mythology's 'Weighing of the Heart'
Pointing to the Era's Contrasting Trend of Soul Liberation

In the Disney+ drama "Moon Knight," the protagonist Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac) is a loner. He struggles with social activities due to mental health issues. He believes sleepwalking is the cause. He shackles his ankle and tries to sleep. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself halfway up the Alps. An unseen presence keeps speaking to him. "You shouldn't be here." "Yes, I think so too. Where are you?" "Give your body to the Specter." Grant, confused and bewildered, soon finds strangers shooting at him, and he is busy running away.

Grant is actually a person with dissociative identity disorder. The identity of his other personality is Marc Spector. After being dishonorably discharged from the Marines and working as a mercenary, he faces a near-death experience. With the help of the moon god Khonshu, he survives and acts as his agent. Grant gets caught up in the actions committed by Specter and is chased while trying to understand the situation. However, he cannot distinguish between dreams and reality. He only struggles desperately to take control of his body.

The production team materializes the clash of different personalities into a physical space. Especially, the house is portrayed as the inner self that Grant tries to protect. Humans cannot live isolated from the outside world. The more Grant obsesses over the shackles, the more he becomes disconnected from the outside world. Even in the dream world, his only escape, his body is taken over by Specter. Ancient Egyptians perceived death as a temporary state similar to sleep. They believed the soul had continuity, connecting the living world to the afterlife. If properly prepared, they thought one could appear in various forms in heaven or on earth like the gods. For Grant, the opportunity to gain new growth momentum still remains.

"Moon Knight" highlights this value by incorporating the Egyptian myth of "weighing the heart." It is a death ritual frequently depicted on tombs, coffins, and papyrus. Anubis, with the head of a jackal, takes the deceased to the Hall of Truth where the scales of justice are located. The left pan holds the heart, and the right pan holds the feather of truth. If the scales balance, the person is declared to have lived a righteous life. If it tips toward the heart, impure fragments are removed from the heart so the deceased is not cursed. The impure remnants belong to the hungry monster Ammit. It devours them instantly, purifying the soul and freeing it from karma, that is, retribution.

The English word "Dammit," used as a curse, is said to derive from Ammit. The production team seems to have focused on this etymology, setting Ammit as a threatening presence to Grant. Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), a believer, preaches that if the living are judged in advance, evil people will disappear from the world and it will become heaven. "Think about it. If Ammit's seal was broken, Hitler's atrocities would have been stopped. Emperor Nero, the Armenian genocide, Pol Pot." "They were bad people." "But they were betrayed." "By Ammit?" "By the other lazy gods."

Harrow does not believe humans can change. He is trapped in prejudice and distrust, judging the future based on the current state. According to him, some lose the chance to change due to past wrong choices. Others may fall into evil, using judgment as a pardon.

Opposing him, Specter confronts with the Scarab. It is a beetle-shaped ornament covered in gold leaf. Beetles tend to bring their dung forward and bury it in the soil. Egyptians saw the emergence of a new beetle from this as resembling the movement of the sun. They associated the burial of dung with sunset and the birth of a new beetle with sunrise. It symbolized creation and resurrection, guaranteeing the soul's continuity into the afterlife, and was considered sacred. Egyptian mythology contains many stories about rejecting evil and choosing good to achieve birth or obtain tools for resurrection. Grant's goal, to reject wrong thoughts, words, and actions to the end, will be found somewhere in that conclusion. Along with the contemporary trend of soul liberation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.