Wittgenstein

If you think the most interesting things about Wittgenstein are that he was born rich (ie you cleave to the Old Religion) or that he was gay (ie you hold with the New Religion) then maybe this is the movie for you.

But if you couldn't care less about those ephemera and care more about the man's actual philosophy, well, look elsewhere. There's no point in wasting your time with this pretentious wank-fest.

Don't waste your time on this film.

Some films are so bad they are fun. This is just so bad it's boring.

From a Wittgenstein scholarship perspective, it doesn't get worse than this. It's a mix of rumors, inaccuracies, falsities and "fun-facts" that lack all respect for its subject. Since Terry Eagleton and the other writers have chosen to give the story what I'd imagine they will call a "subjective" or "personal" slant, you wold expect them to at least make it fun! No such luck.

Here what's wrong: 1. Andrew Lloyd Webber costumes. 2. Every eccentricity is exaggerated. 3. Horrible actors. 4. Wittgenstein was afraid of being misunderstood and only create a jargon self-proclaimed disciples would propagate. This film is what he had nightmares about. 5. Wittgenstein lived at a time when categories like "homosexual" weren't as firm as today. This films premise that "he was gay and therefore weird and a great philosopher" shows lack of respect. 6.It's a case study of why psychologising your subject leads to disaster. 7. They made an interesting person into a fraternity joke.

And, no. It's not bad in an interesting way. Do you're self a favour. Really.

I only have a slight idea about Wittgenstein's life and work. Perhaps this is the main difference I have with viewers who hate this film. Unsatisfied reviewers seem to fuss over which things should have been included in a film about Wittgenstein or how his life should be understood or examined. My contention with this approach is that I don't need to agree with a film's views to appreciate it. I appreciate writers' and directors' liberties in interpreting subject matter, especially creative and witty interpretations.

For fans of surreal and different films, this movie is delightfully and intelligently entertaining. The ton of symbolisms--understated, colorful, clever, cryptic, obvious or not--will make you appreciate the directorial style and the screenplay's ingenuity, and help you understand the philosopher in ways that will not put you to sleep like if you're reading one of his treatises. Breaking the fourth wall with the young Wittgenstein's charming and engaging acting is a treat. The old Wittgenstein's portrayal depicts torture and torment well. An evident contrast exists between the black background and the vivid, exuberant costumes and props--much like the dark life of the protagonist, and the flashy treatment of his life here, but far from flash without substance.

This is the type of biography where the protagonist (as a child) introduces his family to the camera and they proceed one by one to climb a stage and gather around a piano. It is theatric, sparse, with often a few props arranged on an empty dark stage: Wittgenstein in bed with his lover, arguments around a table, a blackboard with a few chairs around it where he taught.

I came to it after a series of film viewings on celebrated thinkers: Socrates, Augustine, Pascal, Descartes. All done by the same maker, Rossellini, they featured more or less adequate exposition of thought against sober tapestries of history. By contrast here we have bare snippets of the thought, no scenery and only a vague history: the man in soldier's costume alone enacting a WWI trench etc. It's called surreal; more apt to simply call it unusual, eccentric.

What was missing from that series I felt was an inclusion of someone more recent and preferably from our own century. Fittingly the only one I found was on Wittgenstein who would have been my own choice as well. Incidentally Wittgenstein fits better than any other with what was delineated in the other project starting with Socrates: drawing limits to reason as what can be reasonably said, embodying what's on the other side.

His disdain for philosophical noodling (seen in the desire for a concrete logic), refusal to bother with an academic knowledge of Aristotle and view that philosophy only creates muddles of thought, in all these he can be seen to be in line with Socrates, right down to the quest for a rigorous moral life.

His algebraic formulations of logic have disappeared along with that whole school that depended on them for a mechanics of truth, what still seduces is this: the notion that we can strive to speak clearly about the things we can, and more deeply something on the other side of that ('of which we must remain silent') opens itself to us. His project was perhaps obscure in details, a bore; but so amazingly attractive in its large span.

And he does deserve a better film than this; not because this one is eccentric by convention rather because the craft is too simple.

It's not the fact that homosexuality is so central as many users complain either; it is, but the filmmaker resists implying this wholly explains the man; it softens him if anything as someone who seeks his lover's hand in a dark theater, but it's not said to be the real cause of tension, that remains the quest for a life of clarity.

We do get only a rough sketch of the thought; but I urge you to bother with the film on Descartes I mention above, three times the length and full of lengthy dissertation, and you'll see no more than a sketch there either. It's after all the sketch of Wittgenstein's thought that seduces; it's a clear picture. So it's not that either.

No for me the real issue is that the cinematic medium offers a richer language (the richest one we know next to personal experience) to lightly sketch the air of those things of which logic can remain silent; love, doubt, being, all this wonderful ambiguity that opens to us. The man's project is the ideal opportunity for such examination.

(In other words it's not a fault for me that we learn too little about the real Wittgenstein to be able to explain him, or too little of his words to know the thought and only barely enough; Wittgenstein would probably balk at the thought that knowing more would explain a real him. But that we miss the richly layered picture that constitutes any life.)

The film ends with a powerful (deathbed) admission about exactly this; the world that our modern mind, logical, obsessed with knowing, attempts to freeze into sparkling ice, but take a step onto the ice and you land on your back, there's no friction; no the real world where you can go places must be embraced with all its ambiguous friction.

I knew nothing of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein before seeing Derek Jarman's 'biopic' of the great thinker, and after the film, felt I didn't really know much more. Wittgenstein came from Vienna, born into an aristocracy that produced many geniuses in various mediums. Although his great mind would have no doubt seen him become prodigious in whatever he chose to do, his real love was philosophy, the only subject that gave him any true satisfaction. Through his publications and teachings at Cambridge, he amassed an almost disciple-like following of those who understood his radical musings. Plagued with a psychological affliction that saw three of his brothers commit suicide, he was often ashamed with his privilege and sought refuge in the working man, who he romanticised through the literature of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Most of that knowledge I gained from internet research after watching the film, as Derek Jarman opts for a more interpretive approach - less of a timeline biopic and more of a quasi-abstract work of art. Jarman strips back all conventional cinematic methods and employs a plain black background, with the only presence on screen being the actors and few minimalistic props. He also ignores period detail, having the characters dress in costumes from various periods, often in bright, outlandish colours, using objects that had yet to be invented (similar to his excellent Caravaggio (1986)). This is successful in attempting to portray Wittgenstein's obviously haphazard look at the world, almost like being trapped between his deep ideas and reality (something that is observed by Maynard Keynes (John Quentin) later in the film), but this also makes the film so visually unappealing that it can be rather dull, like watching a small drama group enact a live play.

Yet although the film is rather un-inspirational in terms of cinematic techniques, Wittgenstein is undoubtedly intriguing, putting a fresh outlook on the tired sub-genre of the biopic. Welsh actor Karl Johnson is fine in the role of Wittgenstein, embodying the disconnection his character feels with the world. There is also fine support from Michael Gough, Jarman's muse Tilda Swinton, and Clancy Chassay, playing the narrating young Wittgenstein. His life was rich and full of incident, and Jarman's failure to really grasp the enormity of Wittgenstein makes the film ultimately a disappointment, focusing mainly on his relationship with a young philosopher called Johnny (Kevin Collins) - as though Wittgenstein's torment could have been the result of sexual repression - and only the skimming the surface of his time fighting in World War II, and the physical abuse he inflicted on his young pupils during his time as a schoolteacher. So Wittgenstein will remain somewhat an uncelebrated mystery, even though he is remembered as one of the greatest in his fields by his peers.

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