sign in sign up
<<
Home , Andrew Niccol, Gattaca

Owl of Minerva Film Series Fall 2016 Sponsored by: The Undergraduate Philosophy Club, Department of Philosophy All are welcome!

Mortal Questions

This fall’s philosophy club film series is devoted to the theme of philosophical problems with life and death implications which confront all of us in virtue of our being human mortal beings. Topics include abortion (Vera Drake), genetic engineering, free will and determinism (), capital punishment (A Short Film about Killing), social health, animal welfare and immigration (Fast Food Nation), love, friendship and intimacy in the internet age (Her), moral responsibility in the absence of the divine (Crimes and Misdemeanors), and the meaning of our finite lives in a seemingly accidental and indifferent universe deformed by human venality and violence (A Serious Man, Wit and Andrei Rublev).

All films will be shown in AJB 105 (Adler Journalism Bldg. Franklin Miller Screening Room) on alternate Tuesdays at 7pm. Please see the schedule below for film titles and dates. Students are invited to stay after the screening for a non-obligatory brief group discussion of each film.

Tues Aug 30: Vera Drake (2004). Vera Drake is a selfless woman who is completely devoted to, and loved by, her working class family. She spends her days doting on them and caring for her sick neighbor and elderly mother. However, she also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. While the practice itself was illegal in 1950s England, Vera sees herself as simply helping women in need, and always does so with a smile and kind words of encouragement. When the authorities finally find her out, Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel. Director: . Cast includes Imelda Staunton, Philip Davis and Eddie Marsan. Vera Drake won the at the Venice Film Festival, was nominated for three and won three BAFTAs. Tues Sept 13: Gattaca (1997). Gattaca presents a vision of a future society driven by where potential children are conceived through genetic manipulation to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The film centers on Vincent Freeman (), who was conceived outside the eugenics program and struggles to overcome to realize his dream of traveling into space. The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes. Gattaca’s title is based on the first letters of , , thymine, and , the four of DNA. Director: . Cast also includes , , Gore Vidal, and .

Tues Sept 27: A Short Film about Killing (1988). A Short Film about Killing follows three seemingly unconnected people around Warsaw, Poland: the idealistic young lawyer Piotr (who is celebrating passing his bar exam); a misanthropic taxi driver; and Jacek, a sullen young drifter who is discernibly wrestling with depression and aggression. The three characters converge when Jacek brutally murders the taxi driver in a senseless act of violence and is subsequently legally defended by Piotr. Director Krzysztof Kieślowski does not focus on the trial and conviction of Jacek (which is inevitable) but rather on his execution, comparing the impulsive, violent murder of an individual to the cold, calculated execution by the state. The result is an anguished, two-act take on the inseparable and diseased connection between isolated violent acts and those sanctioned by governing systems, between the murderers that hide behind institutional anonymity and those who cannot hide their face from the police. The film won both the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the European Film Award for Best .

Tues Oct 11: Fast Food Nation (2006). Inspired by author Eric Schlosser's New York Times best- seller of the same name, director Richard Linklater's ensemble drama examines the health issues and social consequences of America's love affair with fast food and features an all-star cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, Patricia Arquette, and Luis Guzman. Mickey's is the most popular fast-food chain in America, and The Big One is the top-selling burger that put them on the map. When the higher-ups at Mickey's corporate offices learn that the frozen meat patties used to make the wildly popular burger have somehow been tainted with contaminated meat, they send marketing executive Don Henderson (Kinnear) on an urgent mission to ensure quality control and find out precisely how their product became compromised. It's a long way from the Southern California boardroom to the immigrant slaughterhouses, though, and the further Henderson works his way through the bustling feedlots and toward the ubiquitous restaurant sites that have become a staple of modern culture, the more he begins to realize just how dangerous convenience can become when it leads to blissfully ignorant complacency.

Tues Oct 25: Her (2013). In a futuristic Los Angeles, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely, introverted, depressed man who works for a business that has professional writers compose letters for people who are unable to write letters of a personal nature themselves. Unhappy because of his impending divorce from his childhood sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara), Theodore purchases a talking operating system (OS) with artificial intelligence, designed to adapt and evolve. He decides that he wants the OS to have a female voice, and she names herself Samantha. Theodore is fascinated by her ability to learn and grow psychologically. After Theodore's and Samantha's intimacy grows through a verbal sexual encounter, Theodore becomes increasingly reliant on his OS to help him negotiate the romantic relationships in his life. Cast also includes Scarlett Johansson (as the voice of Samantha), Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde, and Chris Pratt. Director: . Her received five nominations at the 86th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won the award for Best Original Screenplay. Jonze also won awards for his screenplay at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, the 66th Writers Guild of America Awards, the 19th Critics' Choice Awards, and the 40th .

Tues Nov 1: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1988). Judah (Martin Landau), a respectable family man, is having an affair with emotionally unstable flight attendant Dolores (Anjelica Huston). After it becomes clear to her that Judah will not end his marriage, Dolores threatens to inform his wife Miriam of their affair. Dolores's letter to Miriam is intercepted and destroyed by Judah, but she sustains the pressure on him with threats of revelation. She is also aware of some questionable financial deals Judah has made, which adds to his stress. He confides in a patient, Ben (Sam Waterston), a rabbi who is rapidly losing his eyesight. Ben advises openness and honesty between Judah and his wife, but Judah does not wish to imperil his marriage. Desperate, Judah turns to his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), an ex-con, who hires a hitman to kill Dolores. Stricken with guilt immediately after his crime, Judah turns to the religious teachings of his family he had rejected in his youth, believing for the first time that a just God is watching him and passing judgment. However his fear of divine retribution evaporates once he realizes that he seems to have gotten away with murder. ‘The movie generates the best kind of suspense, because it's not about what will happen to people - it's about what decisions they will reach.’ (). Crimes and Misdemeanors was nominated for three Academy Awards: , for Best Director; Martin Landau for Best Actor in a Supporting Role; and Allen again, for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

Tues Nov 15: A Serious Man (2009). Written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, A Serious Man is ‘a seriously funny film about an angst-ridden Jewish professor seeking the answers to life's questions and getting a metaphysical pie in the face.’ (Hollywood Reporter). It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Sy Ableman, who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry's unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is a stoner and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter- writer is trying to sabotage Larry's chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person -- a mensch -- a serious man? The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009 for Best Picture.

Tues Nov 29: Wit (2001). Mike Nichols directs Emma Thompson in this HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Margaret Edson. Thompson plays Vivian Bearing, a professor of English literature known for her intense knowledge of metaphysical poetry, especially the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. A proud and independent woman, Vivian learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer and only a short time to live. As she grows increasingly ill, she agrees to undergo more tests and experimental treatments, even though she realizes the doctors treating her, including her former student Jason Posner, see her less as someone to save and more as a guinea pig for modern medicine. The only person who seems to care for her as a person is Susie Monahan (Audra McDonald), one of the nurses on the staff. As she nears the end of her life, Vivian regrets her insensitivity and realizes she should have been kinder to more people. In her time of greatest need, she learns that human compassion is of more profound importance than intellectual wit. Thompson’s and McDonald’s brilliant performances have been praised as their best work in film. Wit won Emmy awards for best film, best director, best lead and supporting actress.

Tues Dec 6: Andrei Rublev (1966). Director Andrei Tarkovsky's epic masterpiece is based on the life of the eponymous 15th century Russian icon painter who produced profound works of art despite living in an age of murderous violence, endless fighting between rival princes and barbarous Tartar invasions. Told in a prologue, eight parts, and a non-narrative epilogue, the film finds a setting to address virtually every facet of the human experience, using its radical narrative structure to explore ideas about the relationship between God and the individual, the individual and society, society and history, artistic creation and faith, and the search for meaning in a world deformed by human venality and brutality. The film explores these themes elliptically, symbolically, and implicitly in a series of vignettes that are almost hallucinatory in their beauty: an inventor floats across a river in a rudimentary hot air balloon while a hostile crowd of peasants and monks jeers from below; a bawdy jester entertains villagers and is arrested by soldiers of the state; a swan shot with an arrow lies decomposing in a forest; a man is crucified on a snowy hilltop while his wife weeps at his feet; a horse rolls on its back in the grass; pagans frolic naked and run amok on a St. John’s night; a town is ransacked and its priest bestially tortured by the cruel Tartars. The final episode wherein the disillusioned Rublev witnesses the blind faith of a boy craftsman in the casting of a giant bell for a cathedral has often been described as one of the most emotionally powerful in the history of film. Because of its topics of artistic freedom and religion, Andrei Rublev was not released domestically in the officially atheist and authoritarian Soviet Union for years after it was completed. It has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.