[Wittrs] Wittgenstein: the movie
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 00:33:19 -0800
I finally got to see this, after complaining to Alex Aris that no movie had
been made of the guy's life.
"There is one" he informed me, relaying details, and a generally positive
review (good leading actor).
"It's more like a play" he cautioned.
As it turns out, I was on my way to Movie Madness (on my bicycle), which
specializes in hard to find videos, and there it was, a dvd filed by
director Derek Jarman.
Having Ludwig's skeptical students (including Maynard and Bertie) sitting on
deck chairs, like poolside, was a funny touch.
He keeps exiting stuffy Cambridge stage left, disgusted by mediocrity and
dialed back "polite company", looking for craggy cliffs more like a Fortress
of Solitude.
Is Wittgenstein our superman then, ready to stare down the internal
self-believing solipsist?
What's harder "egocide" (Fuller) or "killing God" (Heller)? A question for
another day perhaps.
I respected the script for working hard to communicate something of what he
teaches, beyond doing a biography.
'Beautiful Mind'? Sort of. The scene in the Soviet Union was interesting.
The play casts somewhat scary and/or disapproving women.
I liked how it starts with a young boy character and never really gives that
up, ending with like a bed time story.
There, I'm reminded of 'A Cosmic Fairy Tale' by Fuller, his 'Tetrascroll' (a
collaboration).
He goes to Russia to be a manual laborer. Keynes is as important as Russell
to the plot.
Then there's some guy, a younger version of himself like a protege maybe,
whom he's trying to liberate from the fly bottle (get a real job).
But what about his the protege's parents (parents hate him remember, cuz he
was really mean to that little girl, scared her witless).
All in all, I'm reminded quite a bit of 'Logicomix' about Bertrand Russell,
in which Wittgenstein also features.
"Compare and contrast the war scenes (before he was taken prisoner)" could
be a writing assignment.
The movie alludes to some of the scholarship: same history teacher as
Hitler, and Cambridge a spies nest.
You've gotta remember that McCarthyism had it's British incarnation (with
"commie symps" everywhere in fascist fandoms (like mine?)).
The comedy is greatly understated, although Wittgenstein's thinking to kill
himself cuz people were flipping him off with "a V sign", as he saw it,
driving him to self doubt, is beyond hilarious (laughter too high frequency
to make any noise).
Allusions to Thomas Pynchon? Thinking of Adam Bellow for some reason (yeah,
son of Saul and fellow alum).
He's definitely cast within the "tormented saint" archetype (suffering from
virtues), again not unlike the treatment of John Nash in 'A Beautiful Mind'
(we empathize with these projected "crazies", our certified shamans).
If there's a strong word for this Wittgenstein guy, it's "abrupt" (as in
"I'm moving to Ireland" or "our friendship is over") but also -- and this is
what the young boy establishes -- "flamboyant" and "theatrical".
To just say "moody" is really too "broody" -- he's got an ET friend after
all, and a beautiful mind.
Maybe the funniest line is at the end, delivered with Steven Wright like
dead pan:
"I wanted to write a philosophy book that was nothing but jokes." Pause.
"So why didn't you?" "(sigh) I didn't have a sense of humor."
Badaboom. Applause.
I told Alex I found it somehow ironic when people kept "questioning the
obvious" in this film (thereby sounding philosophical) and yet the truly
obvious is barely hinted at ("this studio" is mentioned)
A die-hard truth-teller might want to point out that, for all this talk of
"language picturing facts in the world" these were actors following a clever
script in a Made for TV world (a language), with Wittgenstein himself
nowhere present.
Not even present between the lines? OK, maybe there's some "rhinoceros in
the room" we can't point to [like "roar" to you, too], but there's still no
"pointing" in this direction.
"Read more Hegel? That would drive me mad" -- another throwaway from Mr.
Loony Tunes himself, in response to yet another Nurse Ratchet type, who
didn't like his bringing up Trotsky for some unfathomable reason.
I still can't get over the Martian (almost like a Yellow Submarine
character, foreshadowing a more psychedelic future perhaps, where they / we
breathe a different air).
The jolly green ET is a private language court jester, a secret friend, a
projected homunculus imagined since boyhood, a font of wisdom & nonsense
(like an oracle) tapping into a more cosmic sense of self.
Kirby
Citations:
http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2010/05/buzz-about-shops.html
(Logicomix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ErMolRE8M&feature=related (Steven Wright's
comedy)
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo3632122.html (Heller
book, includes chapter on Wittgenstein)
http://xkcd.com/367/ (re fandom)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418746/ (other Derek Jarman films)
http://www.google.com/images?q=tetrascroll (re Cosmic Fairy tale)
http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/bio.html (re Fuller, mentions "egocide")
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