Metaphysics and the Moving Image: Paradise Exposed

278 Pages·2023·15.914 MB·English

by  Trevor Mowchun

Half Title
Metaphysics and the Moving Image
Dedication
For my parents, near and far
Title Page
Metaphysics
and the Moving Image
“Paradise Exposed”
Trevor Mowchun
Copyright
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in
the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject
areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining c utting-edge
scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce
academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our
website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Trevor Mowchun, 2023
Cover image: “Dandelion Seed Head” © 2016 Tina Leto
Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun—Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in Garamond MT Pro by
Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 9390 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 9392 5 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 9393 2 (epub)
The right of Trevor Mowchun to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003
(SI No. 2498).
Contents
Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: The Death of God, the Birth of Film, and the
New Metaphysics 1
Chapter One Image Breakthrough: Disclosure and Derailment
in Painting, Photography, and Film 19
I. Art in the Wake of Metaphysics 19
II. The Myth of the Lumière Leaf 42
Chapter Two The Evolution of the Concept of “World” from
Philosophy to Film 61
I. The World in the Palm of Philosophy 61
II. Film in the World’s Palm, or the World in its Own Image 74
III. Metaphysical Figures in Days of Heaven 84
Chapter Three Paradise Exposed: Psychic Automatism in Film 103
Primer: “While the will is off its watch” 103
I. The Mechanical Garden 105
II. Heinrich von Kleist’s Marionette Theater 111
III. Robert Bresson’s Filmic Models 120
Chapter Four Nature, Whose Death Shines a Light: Exteriority
and Overexposure in The Thin Red Line 155
I. Introduction 155
II. Dramaturgy of Nature 157
III. A Cinematic Sublime 169
IV. Metaphysics of the Front 184
Chapter Five “Mother, I am Dumb …”: The Reevaluation
of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Turin Horse 211
Notes 231
Bibliography 253
Index 258
List of Figures
Figures
Figures
1.1 Shoes (Vincent Van Gogh, 1886) 22
1.2 Mandoline et guitare (Mandolin and Guitar, Pablo Picasso, 1924) 27
1.3 A View from an Apartment (Jeff Wall, 2004–5) 31
1.4 L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a
Train at La Ciotat, Lumière brothers, France, 1896) 43
1.5 Le Repas de bébé (Baby’s Dinner, Lumière brothers,
France, 1895) 44
1.6–1.7 Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR, 1979) 46
1.8–1.9 Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA, 2004) 49
1.10–1.11 La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, Italy/France, 1960) 50
1.12–1.13 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 52
1.14–1.15 The Straight Story (David Lynch, USA/UK/France, 1999) 54
1.16–1.17 Snow Angels (David Gordon Greene, USA, 2007) 56
2.1 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 90
2.2–2.3 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 92
2.4–2.6 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 94
2.7 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 96
2.8–2.12 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 99
2.13 Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, USA, 1978) 100
3.1–3.2 Journal d’un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest,
Robert Bresson, France, 1951) 121
3.3–3.4 Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, France, 1959) 123
3.5–3.7 Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake, Robert Bresson,
France, 1974) 127
3.8–3.9 Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake, Robert Bresson,
France, 1974) 129
3.10–3.12 Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake, Robert Bresson,
France, 1974) 131
3.13 Mouchette (Robert Bresson, France, 1967) 138
3.14–3.16 Mouchette (Robert Bresson, France, 1967) 141
3.17–3.18 Mouchette (Robert Bresson, France, 1967) 142
3.19–3.21 Mouchette (Robert Bresson, France, 1967) 144
Figures vii
3.22 Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, France, 1966) 145
3.23–3.24 Le Diable probablement (The Devil Probably, Robert Bresson,
France, 1977) 149
3.25–3.26 Une Femme douce (A Gentle Woman, Robert Bresson,
France, 1969) 152
4.1–4.3 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 178
4.4–4.5 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 179
4.6 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 183
4.7–4.10 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 189
4.11 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 192
4.12–4.13 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 195
4.14–4.16 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 199
4.17–4.18 The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, USA, 1998) 204
5.1 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 218
5.2 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 219
5.3 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 221
5.4 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 224
5.5 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 224
5.6 Lou Andreas-Salomé, Paul Rée, and Friedrich
Nietzsche (Jules Bonnet Photo Studio, Lucerne, 1882) 226
5.7 The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr, Hungary, 2011) 228
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
First to my good fortune in not having had my way many years ago when a
somewhat impulsive plan to commit myself exclusively to the study of phi-
losophy at the expense of film failed to materialize, for it so happened that I
found various places and paths, in the university context but also in my own
life, where I could investigate film and philosophy together—and literature,
for my love of the arts began, if I recall, with novels—as equals making dis-
tinct yet compatible claims on my consciousness. While daily life can be all
but impossible without a will towards decisiveness and a stomach for small
sacrifices, the freedom to think and follow thought where it roams (what
Nietzsche somewhere calls “the feast of thinking”) can draw inspiration from
a certain degree of justified ambivalence in a world of increasing specializa-
tion, what I like to think of as a “right” of passage across perceived borders
and against the grain of propriety. The pressure to specialize with its promise
of mastery and belonging may lead you astray if not careful, betraying you
for what is deemed most pertinent and proper, pragmatic and “reasonable,”
particularly at a time when the sheer wealth and accessibility of knowledge
can have the effect of throwing the seeker into submission. My admittedly
limited experience has shown that those who truly identify with the spirit
of philosophy and the humanities at large—that is, those for whom the
throes of committed thought, feeling, and expression are synonymous with
“life itself”—rarely satisfy the profile of a specialist or would ever be caught
pursuing their own confinement in such a manner, whatever benefits it might
afford, and that is a good thing.
The support one receives along the way(s) of circuitous exploration
of interrelated objects of knowledge and across overlapping disciplines is
obviously crucial. In facing the occasional yet inevitable sense of isolation
and lostness that comes with following one’s deepest intuitions, allies are
indispensable. Such “ways,” wayward or not, folly or not, are bound to be
met with some degree of skepticism, and I have been fortunate to have been
given the benefit of the doubt from my colleagues, mentors, and friends,
receiving only the most constructive and inspiring forms of skepticism. I will
take a raised eyebrow over a status quo smile, a pat on the back over a steady
Acknowledgments ix
finger telling you the right or safe way to go—any day. What is the right way,
anyway, but the one that is seen through to the end? Seeing something all the way
through involves seeing into yourself perhaps more deeply than you would
like, but when you find out what you’re made of, as they say, it is from those
materials that the work is built and by those materials that it may fall. You
hope you won’t outgrow it too soon.
There have been enriching, reviving founts of knowledge and expertise
who shined their brightest of lights into the woods of my metaphysics and the
moving image. By a form of duty to what I would call a higher calling beyond
my purview, Martin Lefebvre keenly commented on all the chapters as they
were being written, including material which does not appear in the final work
presented here. It was Martin who took it upon himself, with a patience and
tactfulness all too rare, to put a hand on my shoulder, a mirror to my face, and
interject with the tone of the concerned father: “Let’s back up a bit, shall we?
Have a look around and collect your bearings. Is that what you wish to say?
This is what you’re actually saying.” In this way he taught me a great deal, and
nothing more important than that constructive criticism helps cultivate the
ultimate value of self-criticism, and that no form of criticism is to be feared,
certainly not any more than praise. Andre Furlani, Justin E. H. Smith, George
Toles, and Nathan Brown also provided thoughtful comments on early
drafts of the book as a whole, comments whose differences from each other
exposed it to a remarkably wide range of perspectives and methodologies
(classical film theory, the history of philosophy, film aesthetics, philosophy
of art, poetics, pragmatism, semiotics, postmodern literature, theater studies,
and more). It was George who knew best how to ask (in so many words, as
alive to me now as when I first heard them as an undergraduate student at the
University of Manitoba): “What becomes of the big philosophical questions
when a film about which they are being raised—no, a shot from a film, this
moment from a film—is permitted to ask these questions first, in its own
unique way?” I applaud their stalwart openness—clearly perceiving what I was
setting out to do and intricately tailoring their thoughts to the internal logic
and style of the work, deftly pointing out weaknesses and, just as importantly,
drawing my attention to strengths in need of some reining in.
There were times, I admit, when I may have moved forward too swiftly
and barged somewhat recklessly through these walls we all face, but I was
precisely interested in points of collision, in the crumbling and rebuilding of
great edifices of thought, and that spark convinced me that I had to begin,
well, at the beginning, or a new point of origin. It was then that the words
of another great teacher came to my aid, a figure long gone yet whose works
never lose their power to provoke: Ralph Waldo Emerson. The audacity of
the rhetorical question from the opening paragraph of Nature allowed me to
x Metaphysics and the Moving Image
close one too many books flying around me like crazed birds: “Why should
not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” I suppose I sought an
original relation to the universe of film through a simple question—one which,
today, might be called an interdisciplinary question—that took me years to
ascertain and justify: “What is metaphysics in/as film? What is film as a form,
or deforming, of metaphysics?”
Over the years I have benefited from various types of conversation
with  colleagues and friends through which aspects of the book both
large and small came into finer focus. Here are only some of the cheerful
and discriminating voices that accompanied me along the way of writing
(and in some cases the entire way): Daniel Gerson, Mustafa Uzuner,
Denis  Wong,  John  Hunting, Mi-Jeong Lee, Julio Valdés Jover, Shaun
Gamboa, and Robert Ray. The roots of this book, as long and twisted
as they are, can be traced back to work from two graduate seminars on the
themes of Realism and Romanticism, the former given by Luca Caminati
in 2010 at Concordia University, where I began to think through cinema’s
ontological affinity with “nature,” and the latter given by George Toles in
2004 at the University of Manitoba, where I experimented with the pos-
sibility of putting into practice Stanley Cavell’s bold yet unsubstantiated
claim from The World Viewed that Terrence Malick’s film Days of Heaven
enacts Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Being. I would say something of
the spirit of both of these projects remains intact in the finished book. But
of course the pinpointing of an origin remains, as always, a mere fantasy, a
story at the expense of history. If I am honest with myself, this book is the
maturation of ideas and intuitions long held; and in what is a perfectly bit-
tersweet event, now I am free to let go of it all, to watch this work thrive (or
not) in the hands of others. I hope to always be there to stand by it should
I ever be asked to account for it, and in the plainest speech of which I am
capable.
The Introduction, parts of Chapters Three and Four, and Chapter
Five were presented in their early incarnations at various conferences and
meetings, including Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Chicago, 2017;
Montreal, 2015), Spiral: Film and Philosophy Conference (Toronto, 2017),
ARTHEMIS (Advanced Research Team on the History and Epistemology of
Moving Image Studies) based at Concordia University (Montreal, 2013–14),
and Film Studies Association of Canada (Victoria, 2013). The questions and
comments I received on these occasions remain, even years later, useful
friction in finding one’s footing by making possible small yet significant
adjustments to one’s habitual ways of thinking. Chapter Four is a revised and
expanded version of an essay published in Film International (Spring, 2015).
I thank the journal and its editor, Daniel Lindvall, for granting me permission