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Producer Jack Kelley Talks About The Atlantis Puzzle |
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Recently American filmmaker Jack Kelley (normally in Santa Fe) sat down
with Riveting Riffs Magazine from Denmark to talk with us about his
documentary film The Atlantis Puzzle, now streaming on Amazon. As the
title suggests, the film explores the myth of Atlantis and sets out to
prove its existence, drawing upon some experts on the subject and others
in the scientific community to test the probability of the theories that
are advanced both as to the existence and the disappearance of Atlantis.
While the film advances the plausibility of the existence of the
Atlanteans it also seems to leave us with the impression that these
people were far from the advanced civilization that the ancient Greek
philosopher Plato wrote about. In fact, Jack Kelley’s research was so
thorough that it has left us with as many questions, only different
ones, from when we first started down this path. Perhaps that is fitting
for a man whom we have known for several years and for whom puzzles have
played a big role in his life. It is also fitting that Plato, the
philosopher whose writings he leans most heavily on through Atlantis
aficionado George Sarantitis, left us with layers of meanings in his
stories and with many puzzles to solve.
Jack Kelley talks about separating the myths from the myth, “There are
probably ten layers of stuff in this story and the question is which
layer do you want to focus on. I think Hollywood picked up on this story
(about Atlantis) and they focused on a lost advanced civilization,
something underwater. Eventually over time it turned into something like
Aqua Man and everything in between. There have been dozens of movies
made about Atlantis. I even think, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
with Captain Nemo getting out and walking on the bottom of the sea and
he sees ruins of some city, if I recall correctly.
This is a subject that has fascinated people for so long and people have
put different spins on it. Then you say what is it in popular (culture)
that people have utilized or put in a form to shape whatever story they
wanted to tell. That is altogether good for them, but Aqua Man has zero
to do with Plato, right?
We have come so far from the original story and then when you go back to
the original story. This is where the subtlety lies that I haven’t been
able to necessarily communicate to people. I cut a lot out of this film
to get it to eighty-five minutes. The deepest level I have managed to
penetrate to is Platonic philosophy. What is Plato actually doing with
this story? I would be happy to go into that. There is a level above
that, which I think George exhausted pretty thoroughly. Where the heck
was this place and why was it there? How are we to actually interpret
geography and what is it supposed to mean in this story? I never even
heard of anyone who took this as seriously as George.”
We kept wondering, Jack, can we not just accept the easy way out here
and go with one of the other theories about a huge volcanic eruption
sinking a civilization or a flood or both events combined for destroying
an advanced civilization to which we have given the name Atlantis?
No, of course not, that would not be satisfying to a puzzle solver like
Jack Kelley.
Jack explains where and when this all started, “It was from the hand of
fate. My wife and I were on vacation in 2019, pre-pandemic and on the
island of Santorini. It was unrelated to anything. We were just there on
vacation. In the past people have theorized that the destruction of
Santorini was caused by a volcano that blew up around 1600 BCE. A lot of
people have described that as a possible influence on Plato for the
story of Atlantis, although it is debatable if he or any of the other
Greeks knew that had happened as it was 1,200 years in the past. I
wanted to go visit this place called Akrotiri, which is this buried city
like Pompeii, but it is from 1600 BC and it is on Santorini, which used
to be called Thera. It is a bit like the Minoan culture on Crete.
When the volcano erupted it destroyed and buried the civilization and
blew up the center of Santorini, but it also preserved some of these
villages under thirty feet of ash. Today they have excavated a small
part of this, and you can go in and they have it all roofed over. It is
like walking back in time. In very select areas you can walk through
some of the city streets.
Anyway, that is where we were (on Crete). We were at the hotel waiting
for a taxi. We were in the lobby and there was a bookshelf. I don’t
think I was really paying attention, because I was waiting for the taxi
and my wife was browsing at the bookshelf and she said hey, take a look
at this, you might be interested. It was an academic conference book
that was issued in 2008. It was the Atlantis Conference in 2008. I said
what the heck is this and I was shocked that there apparently was an
academic conference that had been held on the subject of Atlantis. For a
second you think this is really weird and sure enough it was the real
thing. Uncharacteristically of myself, I had not brought much reading
material with me. I ended up reading this book by the pool and it was
quite long. It was written by people who had written very serious papers
on the subject of Atlantis. Some of them were utterly nonsensical
material in my view. (However) I found a couple of papers by this guy
named George Sarantitis.
I am a pretty classically educated person. I studied at Yale in their
directed studies program, which is classics. I studied a lot of
philosophy, ancient history and Latin in high school and college. I have
a pretty strong classical background. I am reading this guy’s papers and
immediately it stood out to me about what he had to say about Plato and
his Greek grammar and this that and the other. It hit me like a ton of
bricks. I thought this guy may have cracked the greatest mystery of
human history. I couldn’t believe how credible this guy was.
I couldn’t stop talking about how incredible this guy was and my wife
said, why don’t you just (send) him an email. I thought he probably gets
(a lot) of emails from all kinds of nut jobs and I don’t want to bother
the guy. This is also from some years in the past, so who knows if he is
even around. I looked him up on the internet, found his website and I
sent him an email. I didn’t hear anything for about four months or maybe
five months and by that point the pandemic had hit. I got an email back
from him and he had been quite ill with COVID. We set up a time to have
a zoom call and we had a conversation. I think the first conversation
lasted three or four hours and Sarantitis was everything I hoped he
would be. He was wise and extremely well read. He was logical and
thorough. He didn’t have an agenda of any sorts. He was a guy who loved
classics, who had studied ancient Greek, and he loved Plato and
philosophy. He also had an extremely high level of intellect. That is
how I stumbled upon George.”
Much of the credibility for this film comes from the experts in their
respective fields of study, whether they be George Sarantitis,
scientists, archaeologists / anthropologists and academics. They
validate what would otherwise be, well, dare we say it, more myths.
Instead, The Atlantis Puzzle gradually builds up a compelling
story, just not the one you likely expect.
To understand Plato’s account of Atlantis is where we must begin to peel
back the layers.
“I can definitely speak to that. I have now gone back and read the
different Platonic dialogues in different translations, from multiple
angles. I spot checked George’s ancient Greek. My own ancient Greek is
pitiful, like first year student level. Ancient Greek is very new to me.
Essentially if you go back and look at those two dialogues Timaeus and
Critias, people forget that Plato said this or said that. He created a
dramatic situation. Four guys were having a conversation, Socrates is
talking with three other guys, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates. They
are just having a chat, and they are saying that Socrates gave such a
good speech the other day that they are so thankful and now we are going
to give speeches to pay you back. What would you like to hear about?
Socrates recapped what he had talked about and for that reason most
scholars believe that Plato refers back to his (Plato’s) book The
Republic, because this was very similar to the society that was
outlined in The Republic. Critias comes in and says, you know
Socrates this story you told about the city state is almost the same as
the story that I heard from my grandfather and he heard it from his
father who is a friend of Solon and Solon first heard it from an
Egyptian priest.
The story is about the Atlantean empire that was once defeated by the
Athenians of 9,000 years earlier in about 9600 BCE. The Atlanteans were
described as this ideal society, but then they became corrupt, greedy
and they became thirsty for power and that is when they attacked North
Africa and attacked the western Mediterranean. People did live in the
Athens area at that time, but not at the level that is described.
Critias describes this ideal story about how ancient Athenians were
combatting the Atlanteans and then the Athenians drove them all the way
back to their capital city. They were about to have their final
showdown, but then the gods decided to punish everybody. The entire
Atlantean city was destroyed, but also the attacking Athenian army was
buried in mudslides. I think the ancient Greek say something like they
were covered by the earth,” explains Jack Kelley.
We mused, mostly in jest, it would be fascinating if ancient Greek
philosophers like Plato and Socrates were just sitting around and
thought what kind of a story, we could come up with that people hundreds
or perhaps thousands of years from now would believe, but we just made
it all up.
Jack Kelley surprised us with his answer, “Well frankly, this story is
not all false, but it definitely is not all true. What is real? Well,
the geography is real. Was the city real? Not as it was described. Was
there some kind of war? We know people were expanding and these hunter
gatherers were moving across north Africa, but I bet you ten kronor
(Jack was in Denmark at the time of the interview) that Plato is making
an allusion to his own time and talking about the Carthaginian empire,
which at the time controlled the north African and they controlled the
western Mediterranean and they controlled part of Sicily. Who were they
in direct competition with? The Greeks. Those two powers were competing
against each other for trade and so forth. It sounds exactly like the
Atlanteans and Carthaginians were doing at the time. They were the
descendants of the Phoenicians.
A lot of people who haven’t read history miss that and those are layers
that are closer to the surface. An educated audience of Plato’s time
would immediately pick up on it.
I don’t think that Plato’s story referenced any kind of historical or
archaeological time frame. I think he set the story that far back in
time as a deliberate commentary about the continuity of civilization and
the story of how easily things can be lost. Shouldn’t we be preparing
for when bad things do happen?
We did an
incredible amount of, and we had to fact check
Sarantitis’ story. I did a lot of scientific research for the green
Sahara segment (we have deliberately left you in the dark on this,
because even documentaries can have spoilers) to try and understand
that. Do we have this right and are we using the correct time windows?
Are we getting the phenomena right and what happened?
When people say what are the lessons for today, I think at minimum there
are five or six layers or there could be ten or a dozen layers. This is
the brilliance of Plato’s writing, because he figured out how to reach
an audience on multiple layers.
Sarantitis came up with this idea of what he called the methodology of
mythology, and he had also done work on the Iliad and the Odyssey. He
had cracked some problems there working with astronomers to try and find
out about the eclipses and things that happened in the Iliad and to
match that up with astronomical records and to find out what year this
actually took place. He has done some really interesting work along
these lines of trying to dig into mythological works and to figure out
what is true and what is not true. Of course you can have truth told
within a fictional story. You read a Hemmingway novel, and you say wow
that was really true, but of course the story is not true. He speaks to
some true elements of human nature for example. That is all to say that
the Iliad and the Odyssey were masterpieces, because those stories could
be told over and over again.
Greek education was basically the Iliad and the Odyssey and maybe a few
other ancient authors. Poetry and music were kind of the same thing.
They were delivered in this metered verse. In a way poetry, music,
philosophy, myth and education were all tied up in one package, which I
think is super interesting. With that backdrop of the Iliad and the
Odyssey those stories work if you are a kid with lots of sword fighting
and then it works if you are an adolescent, boy I might be afraid to go
to war and when you are an adult you are at a different level and you
have to think about diplomacy, military alliances and tactics and
formations. Then there is a fourth level, which is the philosopher
initiate level and that is sort of the wise person who reads into the
allegorical or parable nature of some of the stories. Plato loved using
these multiple layered myths or allegories in his writing. This is how
people were educated in the ancient world. Today we get these boring
textbooks. In 1452, King so and so of Spain signed a treaty for this and
he got this territory. Within a couple of years of graduating high
school ninety-five percent of the people have forgotten every single
thing they have learned in that history class. When it is taught in a
puzzle and you have to figure it out and reason it out, this is one of
the things that you said, that I love puzzles, so to me this was
absolutely captivating to realize that Plato was also teaching in an
allegorical or puzzled, multiple layered level where he meant it to be
deliberately confusing. You were supposed to struggle with it and you
were supposed to ask questions. There are other Platonic dialogues,
where in The Republic I think he tells the Allegory of the Cave,
and you can interpret that in multiple ways.”
Jack, since book publishing did not exist and only the privileged few
had access to the teachings of Plato, who was his audience?
“That is a great question, and we touched about this briefly in the
film. If you think about it, that was one of George’s first questions.
He said wait a minute, who is Plato writing these books for? He is
writing them a) for his students at the academy, which was the school at
which they were taught and b) he was writing them for other highly
educated, well-read people who could afford to purchase books. Books
used to be quite expensive in the old days. It is because the only way
somebody could get a book was for somebody to sit there and hand copy
it. There were not any printing presses, so that is how you got a book.
As you and I are well aware, paying a scribe to copy a book, must have
been an expensive process. The (analogy) today would be maybe doctors,
lawyers and university students would be the audience for the writings
of Plato,” he replies.
Continuing Jack Kelley says, “The thing that I hope people take away
from this story is we have forgotten how to think in an allegorical or
parable way. With his Allegory of the Cave Plato is not saying
that people are literally chained up and this guy is behind them with
torches making shadow puppets on the wall? (Jack chuckles) Then they
literally bust out into the sun and they realize the truth and they have
to go back down into the cave. Is he suggesting that actually took
place? No. Is he suggesting that is exactly what happens when somebody
realizes the truth? Maybe, but if so, what exactly does that mean? I
think we have lost this understanding that stories operate on more than
one level. I can’t figure out exactly why that has happened.”
We have talked a lot about how Plato educated others in ancient times
and how
George Sarantitis further educated Jack Kelley about Atlantis, much of
which we have left out, so you will be compelled to watch the film.
There was a part of this writer, however that wanted to know what Jack
Kelley learned about himself during the making of The Atlantis
Puzzle.
Thoughtfully he
says, “A couple of things, one, you come face to face with your own
ignorance. I just got a dose of the vastness of knowledge out there,
which I only have the tip of the iceberg. That was a humbling
experience. The second was learning from George and the respect I have
for him. He didn’t make a dime from this. He put all of his work and
effort into this and published a book, not expecting to make any money
from it, but because he was fascinated by Plato. Once he realized he had
hit on something and that this mistake had been made about the
interpretation of the Atlantic Ocean. He took it all the way and I have
a huge respect for people who take it all the way. Lastly, I would say
with Plato I gained a whole new level of respect for Plato, and I
realized how much I had missed when I was studying him in college. You
realize there are layers here that you may only be able to access with
life experience and repeated readings over decades. It is staggering and
again a humbling experience. It was also an honor and a pleasure to bask
in the glow of an intellect like that and to be able to grasp and
participate with those questions. This is the only place where I may
have a bit of arrogance, because now I feel like I have the right
approach to it, to look at it in multiple layers to think about it in
allegorical terms, to read on multiple levels, instead of just reading
it on a superfluous level. Today we are taught in an uncritical way.
Maybe that is the best thing I got from it.”
You can watch the trailer for The Atlantis Puzzle here. The Atlantis Puzzle documentary is streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi. You can follow updates about The Atlantis Puzzle on Instagram here. Keep watching this space, because Jack Kelley has a few other films he is working on and he is writing a book. A word about the
photos, Jack Kelley is the young guy in the top photo. The second photo
is of George Sarantitis, and the third picture is an imagined one of how
Plato may have looked.
#FilmProducerInterview #RivetingRiffs #RivetingRiffsMagazine #AtlantisMyth #EntrevistaPelicula #JackKelleyFilmProducer #Plato #Atlantis
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This
is where Jack Kelley’s film becomes really interesting, especially if
you enjoy ancient history, myths and stories of lost civilizations.
