Rupert Read (U. of East Anglia): A film-philosophy of enlightenment

There are significant forces in our culture that militate against a serious and affirmative investigation and cognitive underscoring of the place of evaluation of films (given that films are in some cases made to be seen by hundreds of millions of people), and thus of taking seriously film aesthetics. Relativism/subjectivism and consumerism/individualism go hand-in-hand; both suggest that whether a film is good or not is equivalent to being only a matter of the ‘customer’’s preference.

Drawing en passant on Wittgensteinian aesthetics, I will here suggest otherwise. Following salient moments in Wittgenstein’s work (especially, a key moment in his Philosophical Investigations), it is possible (and moreover necessary) to distinguish for instance between different films (and also within the same film) based upon the stylistic and formal skill exhibited or otherwise: more specifically, on effects of repetition/variation and even of what might helpfully be termed echoings of logic. But some of the films that emerge as being highly positively evaluated may well be very popular. (Indeed: it might even be that they are popular because they create such effects so effectively…)  In other words, an affirmative cognitive evaluation of (part or all of) a film’s style can be helpfully based upon the extent to which the film creates a rhythm of constrained variations or creates an effect as if of a logical argument (with which Wittgenstein repeatedly draws parallels, in his writings (especially in the wonderful section 527 of 'Philosophical Investigations’, to which we will come below, with regard to how music and other art works; I think something not dissimilar is true of film)).

But to justify these claims, I need at minimum to exemplify them. I take an apparently unlikely-looking case, with which to do so. Because relativistic/consumeristic or cynical dismissals of the cognitive value of film and film style are particularly hard to rebut when the film in question is a mass-market ‘commercial’ film: so I take just such a film as my main example. If my claims work here, then a fortiori they will work with ‘arthouse’ films, etc. .

My key example is Cuaron’s film Gravity. It is now five years since this film appeared. Since its appearance, there have been no further similarly significant films made in 3-D. Alongside Avatar, Gravity makes then an unusual claim to be a 3-D film that demands to be taken seriously. Even: philosophically. Gravity’s being shot in 3-D was important because the film offers an immersive experience of the impossibility of living in space. (Whereas Avatar offered an immersive experience of a living world of extraordinary beauty where it is possible for us to live – but only if we are willing to profoundly change ourselves.

But of course the 3-D-ness of these films also offered a grave obstacle to their being able to be seen. Taken seriously. Because the meme that they spawned was: “Wow, have you seen the special effects!” In other words: their being 3-D films inclined many critics and viewers to buy into a form of what I will call ‘entertainmentism’. For, some viewers seemed to be blinded by the sheer visual power of the experience of watching these two films. The visual pyrotechnics seemed to some to mean that these films could only be watched as entertainment, not taken seriously as art, politics or philosophy.

But I shall suggest that if we take seriously key scenes in the film, we can overcome such prejudices. Thoughtful ‘taking’ of such sequences is, I suggest, quite simply an allegorisation of the way such sequences are naturally inhabited by an attentive viewer of such films. A crude ideology of ‘entertainmentism’ that would undermine the willingness to take a discourse of evaluation seriously, cognitively, gets in the way of such thoughtfulness. Detailed attention can re-engage the possibility of such taking; and thoughtful, targeted use of Wittgenstein can help shape the form of such attention, enabling us to take better the form of film at moments such as that that I follow in Gravity.

Gravity, I claim, is a ‘Wittgensteinian’ film. (Also an Arendtian one.) It exemplifies claims that I will be making in my forthcoming book, ‘A film-philosophy of ecology and enlightenment’, also of such films as Waltz with Bashir, Apocalypto, Persona, Fight Club, Melancholia, Solaris, Never let me go, The Road, 2001: a space odyssey, The Lord of the Rings and Avatar.