Derrida

An eye opener into the wonderful world of Mr Jacques Derrida Post structuralist extraordinaire. No this is really just a grim look at a man who continues to plug his pseudo philosophic nonsense to undergraduate students and a pretentious post modernist/ post structuralist crowd.

In the film , the interviews are at times cringe worthy as he states the bloody obvious in the most complex and masturbatory way. The camera crew, directors etc lap it up following him as if he is some kind of messiah, with the answers to the universe and all human secrets hidden under his bob of bright white hair.

It really is boring, we are often presented with Monsieur Derrida doing everyday, ordinary things, such as eating toast and listening to the radio. What point does showing this have other than to say yes the 'genius' does actually do normal things in-between spouting nonsense.

The voice over narration was also a load of rubbish,trying to be poetic but highly pretentious and irritating.

The only slightly touching moment was when he discarded his nonsense talking to reveal his experiences of anti semitic abuse as a school- boy in Algeria.

On the whole a pretty dire film, Derrida had no humor or wit to him, he just seemed to be stuck in a drab world, still holding onto the theories of deconstruction that made his name decades ago.

Watch some paint dry instead.

The man has three ideas: the world is art and is largely a social construction; we are built to deconstruct; when we do so, we must use only our body in admiration because that is all we have. All the rest from him is packing material.

I believe only the first of these, and that not quite in the way that is burdened by his fatalistic dogma. He allows less room for the power of the artist, the constructive dialogue between artist and viewer and the nature/urge of the medium to have its own being apart from the world.

He's a strange phenomenon, a philosopher who deliberately appeals to the ordinary public: philosophy for nonphilosphers. I wonder whether such a thing can exist. Is it more like math and science or art? Art is the notion of internal forces (passion, ideas) formed for consumption. There's the attempt to cross worlds, usually from something deep and unreachable to something that masses can get.

Math differs, and phlosophy probably as well. I know a rather famous popularizer of mathematical ideas, but it seems to be that the very best he can do is impart the wonder that awaits someone who learns the secret codes. I have another friend who writes an extremely successful history book for 5th graders. She reduces history to succinct stories centered on people. I believe that this can never reveal the real lessons, which have to do with forces and urges, complicated stuff to model. Its very hard and pretending it isn't only pulls people further away from ideas.

I see Derrida this way. He's found something that vaguely smells of philosophy, that remotely indicates the promise of a worldview — but that is instead a storytelling framework. He's the sort of person you'd want at a few of your parties, but it seems to me his stories have constraints on how useful they can be, and especially when used as he does: to make stories about stories.

I further suppose that the accident of his popularity was made possible by the need for such metastories and the way that need was filled by writers on French film who later made some film essays.

So it is with some curiosity that I approached this. Its a grand opportunity: to see a story about a presentation made by a man of himself maintaining a framework for stories about other stories. Since each of the 7 levels there are all rooted in film, we might have had an amazing film experience, one that shows and breaks, that uses and transcends, that explores and demolishes.

There is no better expression of limits of ideas than the ideas expressed.

But no. I do believe the filmmakers had something clever in mind. But what they did was center on the self. They accepted his intent without a critical eye. So we get a specific sort — a unique sort — of contemporary French vacuous meditation. Its not even interesting to react against.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

If you've begun reading Derrida for the first time, there is nothing in this video for you. If you've come out on the other side of reading Derrida after a long time, there is nothing in this video for you. Then why watch it? Because it is a document of a man who remains--and will remain--one of the most important philosophers of the modern era. He is gone now, but if you've never seen him you have the opportunity in this video to look at him.

This video is not the Cliff notes to a corpus of work. It is, instead, a look into the public and private life of a man who, like everyone of us, remains a mystery to strangers. And it is a dirty look, a pornographic eye, indeed, that does the looking. The creators are like groupies at a rock show, the ones that manage to weasel back stage passes. They know not enough to ask smart questions, ones that would make Derrida think. So instead, they follow the man around like stalkers, pointing their video camera into his private life: We watch, as did they, Derrida put jam on his toast, talk about his cat, walk through his house, walk through the street. It is as though the video makers were simply in awe of the fact that the man lives!

The same video makers/groupies/stalkers made a video about/on/addressed to/following the cultural critic, Zizek. Similar result, except the latter looked an awful lot like promotional matter. And make no doubt, the co-creator of this video has said as much: "There is a market for these videos," she said at the screening of Zizek in Amherst. Pornographer indeed.

In short there is nothing in this movie that you need to see. But you do get to see everything. Derrida is gone now, but he once was alive. You can find him in his books, but if you want to gawk at him, then check out this video.

"Derrida" dogs philosopher Jaques Derrida from boudoir to lectern and shows him being filmed and people filming him and him refusing to say anything personal while making the usual vague and ambiguous excursions in philosophical thought which one tends to expect of thinkers (or so they think) while never delivering anything of substance. We get to see Derrida butter his English muffin but we don't get to see him deconstruct deconstructionism because, of course, that's not possible. Bottom line: This documentary tries with synth music, voice-overs, translations, interviews, etc. but doesn't really sink its teeth into what appears to be a self-affected man who expects it is better to be thought an enigma than to open one's mouth and prove no enigma exists. Does the future have a future? If you really care, you might want to spend time with this film. Otherwise, just agree that it does and find something interesting to watch. (C)

This could have been a real disaster, and even though the movie triggered a couple of cringes, it wasn't the expected trainwreck. "Derrida" was not too much of a waste. Thinking is a very difficult subject for a documentary. When filmmakers decide they want to present a great thinker, they are presented with a difficult decision: should they make a straightforward documentary concerned only with transmitting knowledge, or should they use the form to reflect the content of the thinker's work? Is accessiblity the goal of a documentary? And how much can we dilute for accessiblity's sake? I think this is one of the few cases where striking a balance between a dichotomy doesn't work. In "Derrida" the directors were trying to experiment with form and create a new audience for Derrida's work. They wanted to document Derrida's thinking. They wanted to archive the man's presense and present Derrida to a new audience. However, they felt that using the standard documentary/biography format would make Derrida's work superficially accessible. They didn't want to commit such an insult. Yet, they were not willing to alienate the audience. Thus, "Derrida" only registers as a lukewarm essay. The directors took an approach that is sold on today's market as "Self-reflexivity, the dummy's guide to artsy." "Derrida" is a series of vignettes where Derrida explains his relationship to the camera and the process by which his presence is recorded. It is a total exercise in metadiscourse, and unfortunately, this theme provides plenty of stupid irritating gimmicks with which "Derrida" proves not your standard documentary but your undergraduate film school festival The rewarding aspects of this film are not the formal experiments or anything relating to the fact that Derrida is presented as a moving image, but rather watching Derrida speak about the camera, the archive or the image. There are some excellent shots of Derrida at work. We witness his careful footwork in the field of discourse, and the director chooses the very potent passages to outline Derrida's duties as performer for no one and the role of the filmmaker in using Derrida's words to present her story. However, the director tells no story. The film offers very little beyond problematizing the roles of the actors in this production of "Derrida." And, I think what was presented would be best preserved in an essay than the series of vignettes called "Derrida."