Philosophical films

This list of philosophical films has generated a lot of discussion lately.

Left Center Left and Tribunal of Experience provide interesting meta-commentary on what it is for a movie to be philosophical. They challenge me to think carefully about why I count the following among my favorite philosophical films:

1.After Life (1997)

The movie is set in a small underfunded social service agency, which is later revealed exist on a celestial plane. The agency serves the recently deceased, who are allowed 3 days postmortem to choose a single memory. This memory will be reenacted and filmed (within the agency's limited budget). Each person's afterlife is a private screening of her movie on Infinite loop.

Main philosophical issues: Intrinsic value. Also, an interesting twist on punishment and reward in the afterlife, in this world, the quality of your afterlife is a function of the quality of your earthly life, but not necessarily the moral quality. The director seems to think that it is important to choose a worthy memory. Most of the drama in the story comes from the counselors' attempts to help their clients eschew frivolous memories in favor of more substantial ones. Some clients refuse to choose at all, claiming that there is nothing about their unhappy lives they care to remember.

The philosophical question is whether you ought to choose a "worthy" memory and why. I've been meaning to write a paper on this topic, so maybe I'll post more on After Life later.

2.Rashomon (1950)

I'm surprised that Rashomon hasn't gotten more play among philosophical movie lists. It's one of the best "multiple conflicting perspectives" movies ever made. The movie consists of vignettes, irreconcilably different perspectives on the same crime as seen by the principles involved. Rashomon is philosophically interesting for all the obvious reasons: Realism/antirealism, subjectivity/objectivity, explanation (can the viewer piece together a coherent story from the conflicting stories?).

3.Seven Samurai (1957)

A maximal application of the principle of charity. There are too many conflicting moral worldviews to list, but Kurosawa manages to present each compellingly. The story also produces imaginative resistance on many levels. Kurosawa is both criticizing and celebrating the values of the samurai. Yet, its protagonists hold themselves to a code that most of us can't endorse. It is difficult for me to imagine a world in which a samurai is obliged to kill himself because his lord has died.

4. Fast Cheap and Out of Control (1997)

An Errol Morris documentary. Philosophical issues include artificial intelligence, materialism, the connection between consciousness and the natural world, and the nature of the good life.

5.The Fog of War (2003)

Another Errol Morris documentary, this one on the life of Robert S. McNamara. Philosophically interesting on many fronts. First off, McNamara comes across as something of a Nietzschean superman. He's just so damned smart, it's hard to hold anything against him. The film is structured around 11 lessons from the life of RSM, including "empathize with your enemy." In that vignette McNamara appears to argue for the predictive value of the intentional stance. The philosophical core of the movie is McNamara's alternating between self-reproach and self-defense for his part in Vietnam. McNamara makes some brutal but lucid arguments about the use of proportional military force. The Fog of War raises questions about assessing a life in full. Can a person be better than the worst thing he's ever done?

6.Breaking the Waves

Imaginative resistance again. Also interesting from a philosophy of religion perspective as a retelling of the Passion. This is a movie about love, sacrifice, redemption and faith. Breaking the Waves is about Bess, a devoted wife whose husband becomes paralyzed from the neck down. He asks her to have sex with other men and tell him about it. She obeys, incurring the wrath of her small Calvinist town. This movie is philosophically interesting on a number of levels. First, the director never makes it clear what kind of moral or causal framework we should assume.

Bess's husband claims that he needs to hear these stories in order to get better, and her cooperation does seem to correlate with his recovery. Bess sees what she's doing as the ultimate sacrifice for love. She's able to go through with it because of her immense faith, both in God and in her husband. We don't know whether to hold her in awe or pity. She may be a pathetic dupe of love and religion, or she may be a saint. And indeed, she is willing to give up everything, including her innocence and her dignity in order to save her husband. The husband's ethics are ambiguous, too. He may be a cynical manipulator of a desperate innocent, or he may be making a borderline-reasonable request of his wife (that is if he knows that this is a world in which her sex with strangers could cure him).

Comments

[Carleton]

How about City of God?

[APFF]

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