I'm making a documentary for Philosophy in Film

I plan to create a documentary on “Philosophy in Film”. I will be creating a timeline covering chosen philosophers during the 1800s and early 1900s and their musings while discussing how they have been influenced into film. The philosophers I will be covering are: Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren, Kierkegaard Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Camus, as well as discussing: Pessimism, Nihilism, and Existentialism. The documentary will be translated through film appraisals. The films I have chosen to cover are.

 

Trainspotting,

• Nihilistic in nature, discusses the passive nihilist against the active nihilist dichotomy through the characters Renton and Sickboy.

• Choose life speech parallels Kierkegaard’s “I saw the meaning of life” speech.

• Makes the audience question the value of everything.

12 Monkeys

• Very pessimistic the main theme of the film being futility.

• The hopelessness of the mission can be connected to Camus teaching on the Greek Myth of Sisyphus.

Dogville

• Nietzsche’s slave/herd morality

• Will to power

• Selflessness a fallacy 

 

 

Withnail and I

• Schopenhauer’s world of will and representation

• Nihilism and pessimism without Nietzsche’s self-overcoming

• “Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by desire and illusion.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Big Lebowski 

• A satirical but in-depth discussion on nihilism and different responses to it.

• Parallels to Taoism and Buddhist teachings which Schopenhauer drew a lot of inspiration from in regard to his own teachings.