I'm jumping into the discussion late, but I think Simone de Beauvoir's
"Ethics of Ambiguity" is particularly helpful for thinking about nihilism
and would help with the question what counts as a "nihilistic film."

She outlines a progressively more adequate series of lived responses to the
possibility of freedom, to the recognition that the questions what I am and
what I am to make of the world are inseparable from the questions what I and
we are doing and what we are making of the world:

1. The first, most inadequate response is to not respond, to evade
completely the responsibilities of freedom and think and act as though one
is powerless, at best a cog in the wheel of an incomprehensible machine, a
nameless face in the crowd: this is what she calls the "subman" (excuse the
sexist language that is duplicated for clarity's sake from the English
translation of "Ethics").

2. The next stage is to embrace the machine, or embrace the ideology or
project into which one finds oneself thrown, to take it seriously: this is
what she calls the serious man, the one for whom, e.g. the "cause of
freedom" or "scientific progress" or "values" are all more important than,
and do not derive their value from, the lives of those who are supposed to
be made free, or the concrete impact of the knowledge that is supposed to be
won, or the individuals whose lives are supposed to be impacted by "values".

3. The third stage is what she describes as the nihilistic stage.  It is,
she contends, morally higher than seriousness (which is in contemporary
political discourse thought of as the realm of "moral values").  Nihilims
recognizes (rightly) recognize that these so-called absolutes that the
"serious man" takes seriously are not in fact absolute; they are not
crystalline or pure and real above the fray of the details of everyday life,
but are merely abstractions that are in fact never really instantiated.  As
John Marmysz put it well, nihilism is the recognition that serious ideals
always in the end come to or amount to nothing -- because they are in fact
nothing when detached from the lived existence that gives them meaning, and
this is how they are taken by the "serious man."

4. But de Beauvoir also thinks that there are more adequate ways of taking
up this understanding than that embraced by the nihilist.  That ideals,
taken seriously (i.e. taken as self-justifying, as automatically universal
or exceptionless) are illusions or at least not absolutely and in isolation
meaningful or valid, does not entail that there is no meaning whatsoever or
that no ideals or projects can or should be taken up at all.  She suggests
that the adventurer, who takes up some project and invests that with a
significance that is not universal but purely personal, has in fact gone
beyond the nihilist while doing justice to the good sense of the nihilist in
rejecting the idealism of seriousness.  Passion and love, also, can invest a
project with meaning that is, while not automatically universal, at least
communicable and sharable.  A fully adequate alternative to both serious
idealism and nihilism on de Beauvoir's account involves the taking up of
projects, and investing them with meaning, that is at the same time
responsive to the existences who are impacted by these projects, and that
recognizes the meaning and value of these projects to be inseparable from
the manner in which they are taken up by a multiplicity of lives.

I think a wonderful film that is not at all a nihilistic film, but that
portrays a number of these stages remarkably well is Gillo Pontecorvo's
"Burn!"  Marlon Brando plays the adventurer, who sometimes regresses into
nihilism when he lacks a project to carry his interest.  Jose Dolores (his
protege turned opponent) begins (at least in the eyes of the Marlon Brando
character) almost on the level of the sub-man, but passes through the stages
of the adventurer, the tyrant, and eventually the genuinely free person.

Other films that are interesting to think about in relation to the category
"nihilism" are several by Bergman, such as Seventh Seal or Cries and
Whispers.  The knight despairs over "ultimate" meaning, his squire embraces
the lack of ultimate meaning, but neither can be said to be nihilists
because they do find various non-absolute meanings (the Knight in the very
quest for a knowledge he despairs over, and occasionally even delights in
his sheer existence over and against the general emptiness with which he
struggles; the squire betrays a kind of grudging care for others -- the
deluded witch-girl, Jof the juggler, and the abused woman -- even while he
espouses nothing).

I guess that from my perspective, it's hard think "nihilism" except in
relation to other "philosophical or lived" positions -- it's the product of
a dialectic -- and so it's hard to imagine a "purely" nihilistic film that
doesn't at least entertain the alternatives from which nihilism must be
distinguished.  A film that trashes my sensibilities is not, for that
reason, nihilistic -- because it's work is to reveal my sensibilities for
what they are (at least to some degree arbitrary and unchosen) and the
outcome of that doesn't need to be the rejection of all sensibilities.

Nate Andersen

*
*
Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon.
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
**