Philosophy and the Movies

There's recently been quite a bit of discussion in the philosophy-related blogosphere about philosophy and the movies. (See here and here.) All of this has been prompted by a list of recent English-language movies with philosophical themes that has been compiled by Jason Brennan.

With one notable exception, though, no one weighing in on this issue seems to know much of anything about movies. It may be that Brennan does know more than his list lets on, though. He claims he wants a list focused on recent movies in English, since he takes it that those films are more likely to keep students interested. That may be true, but that doesn't strike me as a good reason to focus on those films as opposed to older, harder, better ones. I don't think I'd be too worried about challenging them with a film that might not be the sort of thing they'd go out and see on their own. After all, I doubt many students are really all that interested in reading philosophy, and yet we're going to force philosophy on them. So why not force some good movies on them too?

I'm going to focus on films that raise philosophically interesting moral and political issues. But, before I go ahead and give my little list, I'd like to point out that I find little serious overlap between philosophy and the cinema. Film, it seems to me, isn't a medium that readily lends itself to the sort of abstraction that's required in philosophical thought. What a good film can do is raise some important philosophical issues in a vivid manner; it's not so good if you're looking for serious investigation of these issues.

That said, there are some films that I find philosophically interesting. First, I've always thought that the films of Fritz Lang resemble analytic philosophy more than any other films of which I am aware. His best films, I think, are models of how one can both raise and investigate intellectual issues within traditional narrative cinema. He pushes for a sort of abstraction by giving his films stripped-down, simplified stories, and consequently his films often seem like good philosophical thought experiments. Moreover, since Lang almost totally avoids sentimentality and usually keeps a healthy distance from the characters, his films call for dispassionate analysis of those characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

Still, these are largely formal matters--they are ways in which his films read like analytic philosophy--and they're unlikely to be things that beginning students of either philosophy or the cinema pick up on. But some of his films also raise philosophical issues. And the best of his films, M, is also the most philosophically interesting. It raises a large number of interesting philosophical issues, including what we should think of the moral status of the death penalty, how we should think various forms of insanity affect moral and legal responsibility, and, most interestingly, how we should weigh individual rights against the interests of the larger community. In M, the focus is largely on the larger community and the ways in which it can be affected by a single destructive individual. On the other hand, in his later Fury, the focus is on the single individual and the ways in which an individual can be unjustly treated by the larger community. In addition, a few more of his films might be interesting to watch in conjunction with discussion of certain philosophical issues: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt raises questions about the death penalty, and both Rancho Notorious and Die Nibelungen have things to say about revenge.

And believe it or not, there are some explicitly philosophical narrative films out there. During his later, world historian period Roberto Rossellini made films about Pascal, Descartes, Socrates, and Augustine. (These films are not documentaries.) I haven't seen any of these films, as they are very hard to find. But I believe they do concern these figures' ideas, and not just the details of their lives.

Of all religious films, I think there's no question that Dreyer's are those that should be most interesting to philosophers. The two that would be most worth seeing and discussing are Ordet and Day of Wrath. The latter raises a number of interesting issues: the importance of religious tolerance, the nature and existence of evil, the different ways in which believers and non-believers see the world. Ordet has something to say about the first and third of those issues along with several others, viz. different types of religious faith, different conceptions of God and His relation to the world, and the nature and possibility of miracles. (Dreyer's Gertrud would also be interesting to watch in conjunction with discussions of what makes for a good human life. But it's an exceptionally demanding film, and one that few students are likely to appreciate or understand.)

Of course, there are many other interesting films with religious themes. Here are a few (with the relevant themes listed in parentheses): Tarkovsky's Stalker (faith vs. reason/science); Bunuel's Nazarin (problem of evil); Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (value of faith, conflict between religious and secular worldviews) and Au hasard balthazar (sin, the problem of evil).

If you can track them down, any number of Frederick Wiseman's documentaries would be valuable. Primate and Meat would be worth seeing in a class discussing the moral status of non-human animals. Near Death would be great to watch when discussing euthanasia. Welfare and Public Housing should be of interest in classes discussing social justice and income redistribution.

There are several interesting films that might be worth watching in connection with discussions of feminism. Any number of Mizoguchi's masterpieces would be relevant here; The Life of Oharu, Sisters of the Gion, and Osaka Elegy would be especially useful. Other films that might be interesting here: Akerman's Jeanne dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 bruxelles; Cassavetes's A Woman under the Influence; Romero's The Season of the Witch (aka Jack's Wife); Pabst's Joyless Street; von Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman; and a number of Godard's films, including Two or Three Things I Know about Her, Numero Deux, and The Married Woman.

Fassbinder directed several films that raise important issues about sexuality. Some of the most useful here are: Fox and His Friends, In a Year of Thirteen Moons, and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. His early, and unduly obscure, The Niklashausen Journey is also an interesting film about revolution and its possible consequences.

OK, I think I've written enough about this. I'll just list the rest of the films that fall into various categories. In parentheses I'll list additional themes in the movie that might be of philosophical interest.

Immoralism
Bresson's Pickpocket (redemption)
Hitchcock's Rope

Explicit Marxism
Dudov's Kuhle Wampe
Eisenstein's Strike and October
Godard's Tout va bien
Ivens's New Earth
Pudovkin's The End of St. Petersburg

Non-Marxist (or Not Explicitly Marxist) Criticism of Capitalism
Bresson's L'argent
Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (immoralism, deontology vs. consequentialism)
Clair's A nous la liberte
Pasolini's Porcile
Polonsky's Force of Evil
Renoir's The Crime of Monsieur Lang
Romero's Dawn of the Dead
von Stroheim's Greed (greed as a vice)

Suicide
Bresson's The Devil, Probably and Mouchette

Death Penalty
The fifth episode of Kieslowski's Decalogue or his A Short Film about Killing
Oshima's Death by Hanging

Moral Status of Animals
Franju's La sang des betes

Issues of Race and Ethnicity
Cassavetes's Shadows
Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Katzelmacher
Romero's Night of the Living Dead (watch carefully!)