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Philosophical Films
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Hi All,
On a non-academic philosophical note, what films do you think are
philosophocally interesting?
I'll list some I really like. A few of them are rare but have now become
available on dvd at the excellent Eureka Video Masters of Cinema site:
Punishment Park
http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/021.ht
As an avid fan of Peter Watkins I've always viewed this film as mythological,
in the sense that I had read about it, but never seen it and never believed I
would see it. Well done Eureka for realising its worth.
This political allegory is a pretend documentary about a group of dissidents
who are held without trial in a secret detention camp in America. The
President has used powers granted under an Internal Security Act to ce=reate
these detention camps to hold people whose guilt is assumed...could never
happen could it?
The Face of Another
http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc/006.htm
A Japanese film from the 1960's which is based on an extraordinary Japanese
novel by Kobo Abe. A scientist hideously disfigured in an accident has his
face remodelled on a total stranger's. But who is he now?
Sounds a bit of a cliche now, after films like Face Off, but, based as it is
on a novel by the brilliant Japanese author Kobo Abe, this film delves far
more deeply into the psychological and philisophical qiestions of personal
identity.
Woman of the Dunes
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058625/
Another Japanese film from the 1960's based on a novel by Kobo Abe, by the
same director.
It's the story of a teacher, who is an amateur entomologist, out looking for a
rare species of insect in a vast area of sand dunes. He dreams of finding an
unknown specimen and getting his name in the encyclopedia.
Leaving it too late to head back to the city, he is invited by some villagers
to spend the night in the house of one of the women, which is at the bottom of
a deep hole in one of the dunes.
When he gets up the next morning he discovers the ladder has been removed and
it is impossible to climb out.
The woman spends her nights shovelling sand into boxes which are hoisted out
of the hole in the seemingly meaningless effort to stop the sand swallowing
the house. Why does she indulge in the Sisyphean labour?
Sound a bit bizarre?
It is, but it is amazingly rivetting as you watch him struggle to come to
terms with his entrapment and find a way out, and to watch the way the
relationship between him and the woman develops, and to watch him struggle to
find meaning in his new life.
It is a deeply sensual film, which portrays an existential allegory of the
human struggle to impose some sort of rational framework on an absurd and
irrational world.
Stunning black and white photography aswell as brilliant acting
The Passenger
http://www.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=794
One of Antonioni's english language films with Jack Nicholson as a journalist
in a war torn african country, who acts on a strange impulse in taking on the
identity of a man he had met, who he subsequently found dead in a hotel room.
Thought provoking film on identity that you can see at the upcoming London
Film Festival if you are around.
Providence
http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:39544
John Gielgud plays a dying novelist who's having a bad night.
As he struggles with the plot of his last novel he throws back the wine. He
uses mambers of his family as cyphers, but loses control of them and strange
memories intrude - a very thought provoking and witty look at art and memory.
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