Wittgenstein

This is a charming quirky little piece from Jarman at somewhere near his best.

Light, engaging and entertaining, the director has made far more difficult and challenging films than Wittgenstein. This is to the good - as the philosopher was undoubtedly a highly complex personality. He needed simplifying.

Jarman treats his subject with great love and sensitivity. The care and attention extends to ensuring that things are kept easy and simple. Wittgenstein's philosophical outpourings are exceptionally hard to access, but we are given just enough so that we appreciate the genius. It's cleverly done.

The craft extends from Wittgenstein's early life and subsequent work right through to scenes on his deathbed. Via this device we catch glimpses of the whole person. We come to learn a lot about our subject through Jarman's deft and sympathetic treatment.

Don't watch this expecting the surreal grit of Jubilee or high art of Caravaggio. Instead, ready yourself for an eclectic journey through the life and works of one of the world's greatest minds. Your guide is Jarman. He clearly cares about Ludwig Wittgenstein and by the end so do we.

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.

All around a good and fun movie. Like other reviews I've seen, I agree it doesn't go into the depth of it's philosophical topics that much, and it's more of an entertaining movie that is touching at times. But in that, it really succeeds.

Also, it beautifully shows the inseperable intertwinement of the personal and the public, the personal and professional.

If you (like me) you have an amateur interest in his philosophy, I think this will be an entertaining movie. It gets you in the fantasy of living in a deranged social environment consisting only intellectual aristocrats, separated from the rest of the world who are similtaneously set on trying to understand 'the world'.

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 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.