Hi all,

This is in response to Ross's comment: "there is a distinction I would like to make between narrative art film and another kind of film that may not have been invented, although I suspect that it has been .... namely film as philosophical essay, treatise or argument."

It is exactly to the possibility of such films that my previous query (on "Film as philosophy?") was directed.  I would like to think what it takes to be a "philosophical essay, treatise or argument" in the medium of film; and I would love to get somebody's ideas on this.  I have been thinking about it for some time, but have never published anything on it nor seen much in print that is helpful on
this question (apart from the introduction to Mulhall's book I mentioned last post).  (It is b/c I suspect that Deleuze's film books might be helpful that I'd like to try and read him, but it is an imposing task -- I suspect the film books are not the right place to start -- and I've got a heavy teaching load and a family life .... Maybe somebody who has read the books can say whether they think it
will be worth my while).

Anyways: I think it might help to make a distinction between (1) a film that illustrates a philosophical theme -- so that to "get" its philosophical content one has to bring to the film a content/understanding independent of it -- and (2) a film that is, so to speak, self-contained in its philosophical approach to its subject matter.  Of course, that can't mean that it would be understood and
appreciated just by anybody offhand without any preparation or orientation -- I can't think of an interesting piece of philosophical writing that is self-contained in that sense.  What I mean by "self-contained" is something like this: you can say lots about the film, and it may be that talking about it and writing about it, and comparing it to other works are all in some sense necessary to see it and
appreciate it; but, and here is the point that I think to be crucial (even if it is still a bit imprecise) there ought to be (and I think there is in a good film) some sense in which the film itself sets up a standard or criterion by which to judge such commentary; in some sense a good film will call for certain kinds of things to be said (or thought) about it by the viewer; and what is said about the
film would lead you back to the film itself.  It seems that a philosophical film in the sense that Ross speaks of would have to be self-contained in the same way that a good film would be -- with the addition that the bulk of the commentary it "called for" or "demanded" would be "philosophical" in some of the several senses I spoke of in my last post, and yet the film itself would have to be seen as
taking a stand with respect to this commentary.

I know this is vague -- which is partly why I raised this question.  Maybe I can make it more clear (or hopelessly muddle it): I taught a course entitled "Film and Philosophy" in which, among other things, I tried to address the issue of "conceptualism" in film with the aim of trying to suggest what a distinctively "philosophical film" might be.  The way I addressed it (somewhat clumsily in terms of a
quasi-dialectical series of stages) might illuminate what I am trying to get at above: (1) I started by looking at Plato's Cave analogy -- and used that to suggest an approach to thinking of film as not yet idea but instead image that needs to be thought through and beyond; (2) you might have a film that explicitly calls for this thinking through by, for example, disrupting our expectations,
presenting incongruities in such a way that we either are frustrated by the experience and have to say "it makes no sense" or we have to try to piece together what is going on -- say the film "Persona" where the film within a film references or the breakdown of the film don't make sense unless you ask yourself questions like "how is what happens in the narrative of the relationship between Alma and
Elizabeth illuminating for thinking about the experience of watching a film?", etc.; or a simpler example: Eisenstein's dialectical montage in "Strike" where you are "called" to think about the analogy between workers and cattle; (3) but such films operate, one might say, "symbolically" in the sense that they point you to "universal" ideas (ideas that can and must be thought independently from any
particular example) outside of the film in order to make sense of the film itself; I suggested that there might be a third kind of film in which the "idea" that was pointed to was "concrete" -- such that the film itself would be the "idea."   The universality of this "concrete idea" (which I suppose ought to be a touchstone of "ideas") would consist not in its being an "abstract idea" that when
rightly understood (or properly analyzed) should apply everywhere in the same way but in its having a coherence about it that "resonates" -- that "makes sense" (perhaps after a lot of discussion) as a whole (such that you might even have to say of element in the film that you cannot "explain" that nevertheless without them the film would lack something -- so that they fit and are needed) AND
illuminates other fields of experience, opening one up to new ways of seeing and thinking outside of the context of the film.  As potential candidates of such films I showed Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia" and Bill Viola's "I do not know what it is I am like" -- part of the reason I am thinking about this again is that (as I mentioned in my previous post) I have been very intrigued by Mulhall's suggestion
that one might speak of "philosophy in film" in relation to much less imposing films (like Alien) and films that are bound to be enjoyed and enjoyable by lots more people than these two films are likely to be (I have yet to find anyone who agrees with my assessment of the Tarkovsky and Viola films as the most exciting I can think of).

Apologies for the long-windedness.  I'd be interested to hear what others think.


Nate

--
Nathan Andersen
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Collegium of Letters
Eckerd College
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