Metaphysics and the Moving Image: Paradise Exposed - Hardcover

by Trevor Mowchun (Author)

Introduction: The Death of God, the Birth of Film, and the New Metaphysics

Chapter One Image Breakthrough: Disclosure and Derailment in Painting, Photography, and Film

I. Art in the Wake of Metaphysics

II. The Myth of the Lumière Leaf

Chapter Two The Evolution of the Concept of "World" from Philosophy to Film

I. The World in the Palm of Philosophy

II. Film in the World's Palm, or the World in its Own Image

III. Metaphysical Figures in Days of Heaven

Chapter Three Paradise Exposed: Psychic Automatism in Film

Primer: "While the will is off its watch"

I. The Mechanical Garden

II. Heinrich von Kleist's Marionette Theater

III. Robert Bresson's Filmic Models

Chapter Four Nature, Whose Death Shines a Light: Exteriority and Overexposure in The Thin Red Line

I. Introduction

II. Dramaturgy of Nature

III. A Cinematic Sublime

IV. Metaphysics of the Front

Chapter Five "Mother, I am Dumb ..." The Reevaluation of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Turin Horse

Back Jacket

Metaphysics and the Moving Image is an investigation into the medium of film's inheritance of metaphysics - Western philosophy's oldest and most ambitious form of 'truth-seeking.' Why does the moving image of film take up this ancient quest at the very moment when philosophy sought to abandon it once and for all? As the long age of metaphysics comes to a close with the Nietzschean 'death of God' and its crisis of nihilism, the emergence of film at the dawn of a new century brings forth a new absolute value, both life-affirming and more-than-human: 'the world in its own image.' Film radically transforms the metaphysical paradigm from rational speculation through concepts to mechanical revelation through images and sounds - the 'dream machine' at the heart of the medium's capacity to enlighten and enthrall. In this book, Trevor Mowchun discusses film theorists and philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Stanley Cavell, Robert Bresson, and Heinrich von Kleist, in relation to films which possess a 'metaphysical film style, ' including The Thin Red Line and The Turin Horse. Painting and photography are also considered a precursor to the moving image, but it's a specifically cinematic metaphysics which promises to lead us out of the traps of abstraction and alienation inadvertently set by old metaphysics. Mowchun demonstrates that in a post-metaphysical world, questions about being, value, truth, life and death return with renewed force, finding concrete yet open-ended responses in cinema. Trevor Mowchun is Assistant Professor and Director of Film and Media Studies at University of Florida. His essays and criticism have been published in various journals, including Film International, Evental Aesthetics, New Review of Film and Television Studies, CineAction and Senses of Cinema. He also co-wrote and directed World to Come, an experimental drama on the disenchantment that plagues a religious community in the wake of tragedy.

Author Biography

Trevor Mowchun is Assistant Professor and Director of Film and Media Studies at University of Florida. His scholarly essays and criticism have appeared in Film International, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Cineaction, Evental Aesthetics, and Senses of Cinema. He also co-wrote and directed World to Come, an experimental drama on the spiritual disenchantment that plagues a religious community in the wake of tragedy.