A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment Inspired by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and his idea that the purpose of real philosophical thinking is not to discover something new, but to show in a strikingly different light what is already there, this book provides philosophical readings of a number of “arthouse” and Hollywood films, connected by the theme of trauma and recovery, recovery in the form of awakening. Each chapter contains a discussion of two films—one explored in greater detail and the other analyzed as a minor key which reveals the possibility for the book’s ideas to be applied across different films, registers and genres. The readings are not only interpretive, but they offer a way of thinking and feeling about , with and through films that is genuinely transformative. Rupert Read’s main contention is that certain films can bring about a change in how we see the world. He advocates an ecological approach to film-philosophy analysis, arguing that film can re-shape the viewer’s relationship to the environment and other living beings. The transformative “wake-up call” of these films is enlightenment in its true sense. The result is a book that ambitiously aims to change, through film, how we think of ourselves and our place in the world, at a time when such change is more needed than ever before. Rupert Read is Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is a renowned Wittgensteinian scholar, with major research interests in political and environmental philosophy. His published monographs to date are Kuhn (co-authored, 2002), Applying Wittgenstein (2007), Philosophy for Life (2007), There is No Such Thing as a Social Science (2008), Wittgenstein Among the Sciences (2012), and A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes (2012). His editorial experience includes The New Hume Debate (co-edited, 2000), Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell (2005), and the work for which he is perhaps still best known, The New Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2000), which offers a major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein’s thinking. 15032-2138.indb i 8/25/2018 10:34:26 AM Routledge Research in Aesthetics Michael Fried and Philosophy Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality Edited by Matthew Abbott The Aesthetics of Videogames Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature A Philosophical Perspective Richard Gaskin The Pleasure of Pictures Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation Edited by Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini Thinking with Images An Enactivist Aesthetics John M Carvalho A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightment Rupert Read For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Aesthetics/book-series/RRA 15032-2138.indb ii 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment Rupert Read 15032-2138.indb iii 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Rupert Read to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-59602-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-48804-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC 15032-2138.indb iv 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM See demons as demons: that is the danger. Know that they are powerless: that is the way. Understand them for what they are: that is deliverance. Recognize them as your father and mother: that is their end. Realize that they are creations of the mind: they become its glory. When these truths are known, all is liberation. —Milarepa 15032-2138-0FM.indd v 8/25/2018 11:02:20 AM 15032-2138.indb vi 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM Contents Preface viii Introduction: Film as Freedom: The Meaning of Film as Philosophy 1 1 Implicating the Narrator, Implicating the Audience: Waltz With Bashir (and Apocalypto ) 19 2 How to Represent a Past One Would Rather Forget: Hiroshima Mon Amour (and Last Year in Marienbad ) 38 3 Learning From Conceptually Impossible Versions of Our World: Never Let Me Go (and The Road ) 53 4 When Melancholia Is Exactly What Is Called For: Melancholia (and Solaris ) 75 5 Gravity’s Arc: Or Gravity: A Space Odyssey 100 6 The Fantasy of Absolute Safety Through Absolute Power: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and Avatar ) 126 Conclusion: What Have We Learnt? 207 Index 225 15032-2138.indb vii 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM Preface Film is the great art form of our time. I shall set out in the Introduction to the present work some of the ways I see film as contributing—in specific fashions that other art forms or media sometimes cannot—to the great ques- tions of our time: by way of “point of view,” by way of its peculiar and grand possibilities for both immersion (e.g. 3-D) and “alienation” (a la Brecht). In this Preface, I want to provide the merest indication of the “backstory” to why this book (therefore) focuses on the art form of film—from the ulti- mate in arthouse (such as Last Year in Marienbad ) to the ultimate in big box office (such as Avatar ), 1 and to indicate what pre-conditions there may be to approaching these films in the way I do. In 2005, my book (co-edited with Jerry Goodenough) entitled Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell was published. This was the first book to bring together the main voices advocating that films can genuinely function as philosophical texts, and exemplifying that claim across a series of impressive cases of philosophical films. Especially since then, there has been a great deal of interest in the question of whether films can function as philosophical works. This interest how- ever seems sooner or later inevitably to founder on the following dilemma: either the philosophical work done by films is paraphrasable, in which case ultimately the films in question are merely pretty or striking vehicles for philosophizing which precedes them; or the philosophical work done by films is not paraphrasable, in which case it seems mysterious / dubious/ systemically obscure. However, this dilemma, while in its own terms quite correct, rests, I sub- mit, on an unjustified presumption. The presumption is that philosophical “work” has to be understood (if it is to be worthwhile) as issuing in views/ opinions/theses/theories (the content of the would-be paraphrase). But there is another possibility, a possibility explored at greatest length in Wittgen- stein’s philosophy: that philosophical work at its best is “therapeutic,” in very roughly the psychoanalytic sense of that word. 2 Or better still, that philosophical work is “liberatory”: essentially freeing us from unaware con- straint by views. 3 (Views not in the sense of viewings, seeings or ways of see- ing, as with viewings of films or possible perspectives; these are great. Views 15032-2138.indb viii 8/25/2018 10:34:27 AM Preface ix rather in the standard philosophical sense simply of opinions, or would-be definitive claims, most usually, claims of essence , claims of necessity .) 4 Phi- losophy need not—and in fact, if one is at all taken by Wittgenstein’s quiet philosophical revolution, should not—issue in any controversial theses or opinions, any theories, at all. Rather, it should work with the “patient’s”— the interlocutor’s, the co-conversationalist’s, the other’s, and indeed one’s own—presumptions, exposing them to awareness, and thus empowering her/him to autonomously acknowledge, justify, or overcome or transform them, where necessary. My 2005 Film as Philosophy collection, and especially Hutchinson’s and my essay in that collection, endeavoured in a preliminary way to develop the idea sketched above. In the present book, I enter significantly further into it, and into the following closely associated question: Is there a way to understand how some of the greatest (including popular ) films work that transcends any heresies of alleged paraphrasability,5 transcends theories that would subject films to their diktat, and empowers the viewer to understand the work that the films in question do as liberatory work upon and with and through them, the viewer? A difficulty seemingly facing the efforts to understand films as philosophical works has been (in most cases) their con- sistently “dialogical” nature, the way that they offer different voices, and not just (as most philosophical prose works do) one voice. However, this is a strength of these film-as-philosophical works once they are understood as “liberatory” works. Thus this book does not focus primarily let alone exclu- sively on “arthouse” films (though it includes plenty of these). It focuses in the end more on films liable to have a wider influence, films which in that sense matter more. Because I dare to venture (in the chapters on Gravity and 2001 , and on Lord of the Rings and Avatar ) that some films are popular because they are good .