Abstract
A commendable preoccupation of Sartrean scholars is to make Sartre relevant to today’s issues, or rather to show how his philosophy carries across the decades due to its humanist values and to the importance placed on lived experience. Sartre’s own reflections on different genres at various times during his life led him to consider how the ‘situatedness’ of film offers a broader horizon than theatre, and how, of all the art forms, it most resembles the real world. The rationale, then, of looking at films through the particular lens of early Sartrean philosophy is not only understandable but also worthwhile. Moreover, to bring his contribution fully up-to-date, contemporary films are the focus of analysis, being as yet largely unexplored from this perspective compared to those of the post-war period.
The great strength of this volume is that individual chapters can be read in isolation, according to the director or film in which the reader is interested, as each presents a grounding in the philosophical tenets before discussing how they may be applied to the film(s) in question. In both sections making up the volume, ‘The Call to Freedom’ and ‘Films of Situation’, most chapters refer to core Sartrean texts conveying conceptualizations of human behaviour: Existentialism is a Humanism and Being and Nothingness are the most commonly cited ones. This results in some repetition of existentialist themes across the book, as the editors admit (p. 2), but does not detract from the validity of each of the self-contained arguments for a Sartrean ‘viewing’ of the films. Other chapters, more concerned with the parallels between filmic representation and actual character formation, look closely at the role of human agency by bringing in comparisons and contrasts with Sartre’s novels (Nausea is popular) and plays (for example, No Exit and The Flies).
An interesting point mentioned in the introduction (p. 7), and recurring in Chapter 4, centres on the way that the films selected are ‘read’ or treated like narrative texts, rather than ‘seen’ as filmic objects in their own right. In other words, emphasis is often placed on character analysis, the choices made and the responsibilities either assumed or rejected by the protagonist, all Sartrean modes of critique which tend to take the focus away from ‘what is specific to the medium of film’ (p. 64, quoting Critchley). Such self-reflection is to be admired, as Sartre himself would have surely concurred, and it ensures that the authors avoid falling into the trap of ‘essentializing’ aspects of the films, suggesting types and exemplars and forgetting the rest of the film. The approaches taken invariably build a bridge between philosophy, fiction and film criticism.
The first chapter demonstrates how the protagonist of The Truman Show reacts to the possibility of freedom by trying to turn his back on situation, thus diverging from Sartre’s philosophical stance in which the self always remains situated. The feelings of angst and despair accompanying knowledge of one’s autonomy are shown to lead to inauthentic behaviour, moral indifference and to more extreme examples of bad faith in the following two chapters on Michael Haneke’s films and Mike Leigh’s Naked. In contrast, the heroine of the Dardenne brothers’ film Lorna’s Silence is all too aware of her burden of responsibility (towards the dead and unborn, primarily) and is constantly challenged with the possibility of change and personal transformation. In The Crying Game, when the choice of action is no longer determined by political affiliation, but has become personal and moral, Fergus is entirely free to act according to the demands of the situation and his sense of responsibility. Likewise, in Chapter 9, the heroine of Moolaadé decides to go against generations of tradition, patriarchy and religion to endorse her authentic engagement with others, weaker than herself, who have come to her for protection. The reaction to extreme freedom, indeed lawlessness, is the principal focus of the discussion about No Country for Old Men, whose three main characters grapple with chance, free will and fate, with only one of them emerging as an authentic being. The theme of love unites the final two chapters on Cédric Klapisch’s films and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet. In the first, Xavier comes to the realization that he must commit himself authentically to writing and to a relationship, while in the second the familiar theme of escaping determinism is explored alongside an intricate examination of the film itself, in terms of its modernizing techniques, use of music, and reflexivity as an adaptation. While some authors in this volume use Sartrean terminology playfully, like an old friend, others explain the intricacies of his philosophies carefully and reverently. Yet whatever the style, all do justice to the cause of making Sartrean existentialism relevant today.