Wittgenstein (1993)
May. 15th, 2012 10:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyWittgenstein. Dir. Derek Jarman, 1993.
I heard about this movie fromrushthatspeaks's review.
This was Derek Jarman's last film; he was, apparently, mostly blind while he was working on it. He was, clearly, an amazing artist.
Wittgenstein's philosophy is crucial and difficult, but this movie manages the impressive feat of making the man and the philosophy quite comprehensible. As rush noted, the cinematic device of shooting the actors against completely black backgrounds actually works quite well for Wittgenstein's philosophy, especially because the costuming is done using Wittgenstein's theories on color. It is neon and eye-popping and amazing.
The movie is actually, for a movie about a depressed man with a depressing philosophy, notably and frequently hilarious. It helps that much of the movie is narrated by Wittgenstein himself, aged approximately twelve - this sounds twee, but is anything but. It also helps that the cast is uniformly stellar, particularly Tilda Swinton as Ottoline Morrell (whose reply to the question, "Don't you want to be perfect?" is a succinct and telling "Christ, no!") and John Gough as Bertrand Russell.
I don't know that the film actually made me very sympathetic towards Wittgenstein himself; well, no, I did sympathize with him and his philosophical dilemmas, but not in every way possible. For me it's hard to ignore the class privilege of giving away your entire inheritance (and your family being so rich that Hitler granted you and your siblings' application for mixed-race status just so the Reichsbank could nationalize your foreign currency holdings), though I also don't think, unlike the anonymous IMDb reviewer, that the film paints Wittgenstein's self-disgust as a consequence solely of his homosexuality. I think that reviewer was confused by the fact that Jarman's movie doesn't downplay the same-sex affairs of any of its protagonists, but there's a difference between not ignoring something and making an issue out of it, and those affairs are not played confrontationally as they are in Jarman's Edward II. Moreover, having seen the film, Wittgenstein's self-disgust (bordering at one point on suicidal ideation) seems more a consequence of everything in his life than of any one thing, though the film touches lightly on many conventional biographical details. For all the information it irons out or neglects, however, the film is, in the end, in its own way, quite moving, and quite impressive. I would highly recommend it.
I heard about this movie from
rushthatspeaks's review. This was Derek Jarman's last film; he was, apparently, mostly blind while he was working on it. He was, clearly, an amazing artist.
Wittgenstein's philosophy is crucial and difficult, but this movie manages the impressive feat of making the man and the philosophy quite comprehensible. As rush noted, the cinematic device of shooting the actors against completely black backgrounds actually works quite well for Wittgenstein's philosophy, especially because the costuming is done using Wittgenstein's theories on color. It is neon and eye-popping and amazing.
The movie is actually, for a movie about a depressed man with a depressing philosophy, notably and frequently hilarious. It helps that much of the movie is narrated by Wittgenstein himself, aged approximately twelve - this sounds twee, but is anything but. It also helps that the cast is uniformly stellar, particularly Tilda Swinton as Ottoline Morrell (whose reply to the question, "Don't you want to be perfect?" is a succinct and telling "Christ, no!") and John Gough as Bertrand Russell.
I don't know that the film actually made me very sympathetic towards Wittgenstein himself; well, no, I did sympathize with him and his philosophical dilemmas, but not in every way possible. For me it's hard to ignore the class privilege of giving away your entire inheritance (and your family being so rich that Hitler granted you and your siblings' application for mixed-race status just so the Reichsbank could nationalize your foreign currency holdings), though I also don't think, unlike the anonymous IMDb reviewer, that the film paints Wittgenstein's self-disgust as a consequence solely of his homosexuality. I think that reviewer was confused by the fact that Jarman's movie doesn't downplay the same-sex affairs of any of its protagonists, but there's a difference between not ignoring something and making an issue out of it, and those affairs are not played confrontationally as they are in Jarman's Edward II. Moreover, having seen the film, Wittgenstein's self-disgust (bordering at one point on suicidal ideation) seems more a consequence of everything in his life than of any one thing, though the film touches lightly on many conventional biographical details. For all the information it irons out or neglects, however, the film is, in the end, in its own way, quite moving, and quite impressive. I would highly recommend it.