Metaphysics – Transcendence – Atheism

"IMAGES" 2021, Vol. XXX, No. 39 METAPHYSICS – TRANSCENDENCE – ATHEISM A product of the nineteenth century, the cinematic arts were born to capture the very material reality present in front of the lens. Erwin Panofsky called this reality “profilmic,” while André Bazin argued that recording the existence of material objects on film fulfilled what he called mankind’s “mummy complex,” the desire to immortalize fleeting entities in the form of images. With time, film outgrew this initial function and began making attempts to depict spiritual realities as well (with films by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Krzysztof Zanussi, and other artists). First coined by American director and film theorist Paul Schrader to describe the work of Dreyer, Bresson, and Ozu, the phrase “transcendental style” (itself a misnomer, as the term “transcendent style” would be much more fitting here) was soon picked up by fellow authors, who used it to interrogate the transcendent in the work of the three aforementioned directors and other filmmakers (vide: Seweryn Kuśmierczyk’s essay on Tarkovsky and the rich body of literature written on the director). A counterstrain, however, coalesced around neoformalist and cognitivist David Bordwell, who contended that the particular “parametric form,” its style autonomous and autotelic, compelled critics to seek within it a metaphysics that he did not believe could be found in the work of Ozu, Dreyer, or Bresson—a position he elaborated on extensively in his monographs on the work of the former two and essays on films by the latter. Recent Bresson scholarship (vide: Colin Burnett’s monograph) has questioned the validity of this “Schraderian” option even further. The obverse of the efforts of “metaphysical” directors may be found in the work of those filmmakers whose narratives examine the spiritual void, nihilism, and axiological indifferentism of consumer societies—such as Ingmar Bergman and his Through a Glass Darkly– Winter Light–The Silence trilogy, most of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, the controversial pictures of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Ferreri, as well as more recently, the films of David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke, or Andrey Zvyagintsev. Paradoxically, as the films seek to examine the “loss of metaphysical sensation,” they themselves become metaphysical somewhat à rebours, despite their authors explicit admissions of atheism. Contemporary neomodernist cinema, on account of its visual embrace of long takes, a contemplative style, and a perceptually difficult temps mort, seems to evoke, somewhat paradoxically, a kind of transcendence. Join us for an interrogation of the potential of the cinema, both classic and contemporary, to evoke a deeper reflection over the presence/absence (whichever applies) of metaphysics, transcendence, God on the one hand, and nihilism, atheism, and axiological indifferentism on the other. The question of cinematic representations of religion and religiosity, both their institutional and unorthodox incarnations, remains no less interesting. And in recent years these aspects have proven themselves difficult to separate, thus demanding a particular sort of examination—examples include Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi or the two seasons of Paolo Sorrentino’s papacy drama set in the Vatican. Furthermore, the spectrum of inquiry into film and religion continues to broaden, recently moving into popular and documentary films. The latter merit particular attention on account of the fact that themes and questions related to religion in non- fictional cinema have been previously mostly unexplored. We are waiting for the articles until December 31st, 2020. The issue is scheduled for the end of 2021. For more information and editorial instructions, please visit: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/i/about/submissions. The journal is indexed in: SCOPUS, INDEX COPERNICUS INTERNATIONAL, CEEOL, ERIH PLUS, PKP Index. Prof. Tomasz Kłys, University of Lodz ([email protected]) Adam Domalewski, PhD, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań ([email protected]) .

Load more