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.

Although there is no accounting for the audacious and experimental style in which artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman has put together this offbeat biography of the famed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, one can't help feeling a little disappointed by the slight and unimaginative focus the film gives to the real life concerns of this great and forward thinking individual. As the previous reviewer points out, if you (much like myself) know little to nothing about the philosophical or biographical background of Wittgenstein the man, then this film really offers very little in the way of enlightenment; never giving the audience the chance to gain real insight into the character or the events of his life, save perhaps, for a few brief scenes included to prove a point. This lack of information and development is a serious problem that mars the film greatly and is a problem that can only be attributed to Jarman and the writers.

Much like his similarly themed, off-kilter biography of the artist Caravaggio (1986), Jarman here ignores the facts and instead opts for more of a personal deconstruction. As much admiration as I have for the director to break away from the usually rigid confines of biographical pictures that seem to force feed the audience an entire life in a neat and digestible two-hour course, I do not admire his way of frequently shifting focus from any real artistic or intellectual talent, onto what seem like very trivial, melodramatic examinations of sexuality. Interspersed between serious scenes of Wittgenstein trying in vain to explain his theories to the masses, or amazing sequences where reality is broken down and all sorts of bizarre images are allowed to overflow from the screen, there are irrelevant and silly sequences where Wittgenstein and his lover cuddle in a cinema or have insignificant arguments that recall a homosexual take on a Hollywood rom-com.

What we get from the film is simply Wittgenstein as a contemptuous, arrogant, petty loner who wasn't against berating the children who couldn't decipher his highly intelligent philosophies and wasn't happy unless he was dispelling all around him. Now, this may only be a half-truth, but since we never learn the full fact of the matter this cloddish rendition is the only conclusion we can make, which, for a real and important historical figure is far below standard. There is however a saving grace here, and, as ever with Jarman, it is in the visual presentation of the film. Never overly flamboyant, and never getting in the way of the story, the design of the film still bold, innovative and highly impressive. Faced with a miniscule budget, the limitations of British television and a shooting schedule of just over fifteen days, most filmmakers would have produced a film with no visual imagination whatsoever. Jarman however took that challenge and created one of the most surprising visual experiences ever filmed; and all within the confines of a London warehouse.

Of course, many will balk at the idea of using a little imagination when watching the film -- having been weaned on a combination of high-concept and MTV, I myself found it a struggle to look past the minimalism of the set design or the disconcerting contrast between picture and sound -- but if you look a little deeper, the effect of Jarman's theatrical framework gives way to a wealth of hidden details. This is a film in which the visuals capture the imagination, even if the story doesn't; creating an amazingly sensory feel similar to what Lars von Trier did with the film Dogville (2003). By the time the film is over you'll swear you saw scenes and images that never actually appeared, images that were formed purely in your imagination.

Wittgenstein (1993) demonstrates a talent for creating an outrageous atmosphere in a restrained setting and the ability to instill a feeling of longevity to the visual design that manages to outlive both the narrative and the character. Still, it could have been so much more - Jarman's self-serving and idiosyncratic storytelling approach means we can only imagine what could have been. If Jarman had restrained his need for self-assessment and put as much imagination into the script as he did with the iconography we could have been looking at a near-masterpiece. What we have instead is simply a bizarre, confused, interesting, though inconsistent experiment that leaves the viewer with some seriously mixed feelings.

I was marching through comprehensive viewing of the Greenaway section in our local art video store, and got into an argument with the proprietor. He felt that Greenaway was excessive pretentious and juvenile and suggested this film as `real' intelligent filmmaking. I really wanted to discover a new director, so watched with expectation.

About the actual art of the filmmaking, I can report that this to be completely mundane. The technique is of stationary filming of a staged play with no risk and little imagination.

But the topic has real promise! Wittgenstein is among the dozen most fascinating men of ideas who ever lived. He anticipated the core ideas about logic and language that are commonplace today. But he was profoundly not influential. All these ideas were reinvented by independent means because his explications were so abstruse. I believe them to be necessarily so, and we still don't appreciate the full ambiguities he noted.

This is grand, fascinating stuff, but in this play we get the most trivial inklings of his middle period. How sad.

Independent of the ideas, his life is remarkable. He was rich and gave it away. He absolutely mastered a strain of philosophical thought and was universally celebrated (though not understood). He tossed it away, disclaiming all his ideas and starting over as his own most powerful detractor. And he did this thrice! He went from the protection of the university to hovels and degradation multiple times. Along the way he designed one of the most puzzling houses on the planet. This is great, great stuff.

But this film is motivated by a politico-sexual agenda, so while watering down the great intellectual and physical swings, ascribes them to repressed guilt of his sexuality. Wittgenstein would be appalled, I think, to have his great projects and discipline so debased. In fact, he seemed to have repressed guilt about everything he could conceive, and among these homosexuality was a lesser driver because the environment was so accepting, even encouraging. Alan Turing of the next generation, is a different, more apt story.

The report then is that this is not cinematically interesting, and some great drama has been missed in order to make a minor -- and perhaps untrue -- point.

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 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.