New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images [Book Review]

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Stadler, Jane (2013) New philosophies of ﬁlm: Thinking images [Book review]. British Journal of Aesthetics, 53(1), pp. 131-133.

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Stadler reviews "New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images" by Robert Sinnerbrink, Continuum, 2011. pp. x + 247. ₤17.99 (pbk).

In its exploration of the relationship between image and thought, Robert Sinnerbrink’s new book, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images, joins a steadily growing body of work at the intersection of film and philosophy. The past decade has seen the publication of a number of titles in this fertile area, including Kevin Stoehr’s edited collection Film and Knowledge (2002), Richard A. Gilmore’s Doing Philosophy at the Movies (2005), Daniel Frampton’s Filmosophy (2006), Thomas Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen (2007), Stephen Mulhall’s On Film (2008), Daniel Shaw’s Film and Philosophy (2008), James Phillips’ edited anthology Cinematic Thinking (2008), and The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (2011) edited by Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. New Philosophies of Film canvasses and contributes to this spate of film‐meets‐philosophy texts that emerged in the wake of the psychoanalytic and ideological theories of film that dominated the 1970s. With a focus on cognitivism, romanticism, film form, and thematic analysis, Sinnerbrink traces the development of philosophical approaches to film from Stanley Cavell’s influential work through to contemporary debates. Sinnerbrink’s critical engagement with key interdisciplinary thinkers provides a thoughtful and sophisticated synthesis of scholarly work spanning film theory and philosophy as he mounts a convincing defence of cinema’s aesthetic significance.

One aspect that distinguishes Sinnerbrink’s book is that he seeks to level the hierarchy of film and philosophy by acknowledging both parties ‘as equals whose union preserves their particular differences’ (120). While this is an important corrective to previous work that has tended to privilege philosophy, it is worth noting that Sinnerbrink is talking about the equal standing of film and philosophy rather than arguing the discipline of film studies is on equal footing with philosophy. Much fine work in film theory and analysis is disregarded by philosophers who focus on film narrative at the expense of film style and the cultural and industrial contexts that govern the production and reception of screen texts. Although Sinnerbrink’s careful attention to screen aesthetics as well as narrative content means that he does not fall into this trap, his disciplinary location is still firmly in philosophy.

The book is organized in three parts: part I provides an overview of the ‘Analytic‐Cognitivist Turn’ in film studies; part II examines the shift from cognitivism to ‘Film‐Philosophy’; and part III, which is titled ‘Cinematic Thinking’, puts Sinnerbrink’s own mode of philosophically informed criticism into practice in the course of his considered analysis of three films. The first section of the book revisits Nöel Carroll and David Bordwell’s critique of screen theory, introduces new ontologies of film, and gives a thoughtful overview of philosophical approaches to narrative. The second part of the book offers a detailed account of cognitivist perspectives on film as well as reviewing Stanley Cavell’s and Gilles Deleuze’s important contributions to the disciplines of film and philosophy and introducing the idea of film as philosophy. Part III deserves careful consideration as it marks Sinnerbrink’s original contribution to the field in the form of illuminating analyses of three films directed by leading art cinema auteurs: this section examines David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006), Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005). I take the last three chapters of the book to demonstrate several means by which film might provoke and express philosophical insights in ways that are not readily formulated as philosophical propositions or expressed as systematic arguments. In this sense, in terms of what Sinnerbrink calls ‘cinematic thinking’, philosophical meaning can be communicated and grasped through aesthetics and affect as well as thought.

Sinnerbrink interprets the fragmented narrative, doubling of identity, and film‐within‐a‐film conceit of Inland Empire as Lynch’s criticism of Hollywood and his celebration of the artistic prospects of the digital age, describing it as a film that contemplates its own nature and experiments with the possibilities of the medium. Akin to self‐reflexive ‘films about film’ such as Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954); Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995); Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960); and Lynch’s own Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997), and Mulholland Drive (2001)—Sinnerbrink claims Inland Empire is a film that ‘engages in its own distinctive kind of cinematic thinking; an intuitive, affective, aesthetic reflection on the possibilities of cinema today’ (152). To approach Inland Empire from a purely cognitivist perspective that contemplates the clues and cues to meaning that are encoded in the narrative, Sinnerbrink argues, is to fail either to acknowledge the aesthetic and affective dimensions of the film or to account for the holistic response it elicits. Even when applied to a film that explicitly invites serious intellectual engagement, Sinnerbrink’s romantic‐reflective perspective on the subjective experience of cinema and the philosophical insights that it can evoke is distinct from ‘the disengaged, intellectually curious, puzzle solving attitude’ of analytic‐cognitivist approaches to film and philosophy (154).

Even more so than Inland Empire, Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, with its highly stylized treatment of anguish, anxiety, and guilt, is a deeply disturbing and ambiguous film. Sinnerbrink’s treatment of Antichrist is in some senses a classic auteur study that situates the film in relation to aesthetic tendencies and thematic preoccupations evident in the director’s previous work. What sets his approach apart from auteur criticism is that Sinnerbrink is not claiming that Antichrist is a conduit for von Trier’s own philosophical thinking, nor does he see the film simply as a narrative thought experiment to which philosophical accounts of horror or tragic art can be applied. Instead, he makes the more interesting point that the experience of psychological trauma into which the film delves is itself resistant to being intellectualized and mastered; furthermore, in communicating a deep sense of trauma’s brutal, confusing, and recurring aftershocks Antichrist somehow instantiates and invites a critique of cognitivism. Due in part to the disturbing affront to reason posed by the protagonists’ tortured psyches and sadistic behaviour following the death of their son, ‘Antichrist offers a cinematic counter‐example to prevailing cognitivist theories of horror’ (163). The film does not offer its audience catharsis and it resists sublimation, cognitive mastery, or the pleasures of aesthetic contemplation; as such, Sinnerbrink argues, ‘it is a violent provocation to thought and a traumatic case of cinematic thinking’ (163).

The New World, Terrence Malick’s lyrical retelling of the Pocahontas story, is a very different kind of film from Antichrist or Inland Empire, yet for Sinnerbrink it also ‘enacts a kind of cinematic thinking that invites philosophical and aesthetic responses, while articulating a kind of thinking that resists translation into a ready‐made thesis, position or argument’ (181). Interpreting the film as a form of poetic reflection or ‘aesthetic mythologizing’ that presents nature itself as a sublime ‘subject’ or an agent that participates in the making of history, Sinnerbrink argues that Malick’s own version of cinematic romanticism offers an affective, sensuous ‘experience of cinematic thinking that evokes the possibility of another way of thinking, being, dwelling—if only we are open to the possibility’ (192).

New Philosophies of Film concludes by advocating a romantic‐reflective approach to cinema, following in the tradition of film‐philosophers such as Cavell. This ‘transformative hermeneutics’, which Sinnerbrink himself models in the nuanced analyses of the book’s three concluding chapters, reveals that film can rightly be considered an artistic and narrative medium of thought that can express philosophical ideas. This romantic‐reflective style of film‐philosophy ‘invites us to consider whether philosophical writing on film can be something other than always explanatory, argumen tative or theoretical’ (194). This concluding point is suggestive, and also persuasive given that the meaning of a philosophical work, like the meaningfulness of a cinematic artwork or narrative, demonstrably exceeds the intended meaning encoded by the author, thinker, or film‐maker. A theme that runs through Sinnerbrink’s work is that we must consider the relationship between film form and narrative content, and attend closely to the meaning conveyed by aesthetic style. Since film and philosophy habitually communicate ideas in very different ways it makes sense that each may open up the other to new modes of expression and contemplation when they are brought into dialogue.

Sinnerbrink’s lively intellectual engagement with both philosophers and film theorists is replete with lucid explanations and perceptive examples that will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate university students interested in film and philosophy. However, New Philosophies of Film goes further than books written to serve undergraduate philosophy courses such as Christopher Falzon’s Philosophy Goes to the Movies (2007), and Mary Litch’s Philosophy through Film (2010). Indeed, Sinnerbrink’s monograph makes a scholarly contribution to film studies as well as offering new philosophical perspectives on film as it engages with enduring issues in both film studies and philosophy.

Jane Stadler