Another Look at Heideggerian Cinema: Cinematic Excess, Antonioni’s Dead Time and the Film-Photographic Image as Copy

Abstract

Within the loose group of studies that are sometimes labelled Heideggerian cinema – studies in which scholars consider film in conjunction with Heidegger’s philosophy – little attention has been paid to Heidegger’s actual view of cinema. This omission is not only odd (Heidegger’s view of film would seem essential for a Heideggerian cinema) but it is also problematic. In the off-hand comments Heidegger directs towards film throughout his collected works he criticises the medium for its covering over of Being, a fact that makes engaging with film through Heidegger’s thinking a questionable project. The present article aims to address this omission and to provide a conception of Heideggerian cinema that does not ignore, but answers, Heidegger’s criticism. It argues that it is not the technological nature of cinema that is the source of Heidegger’s hostility towards the medium but his conception of the film-photographic image as a transparent copy of the world. It is on this basis that cinema is denied the capacity to manifest Being and hence is subject to critique. I then argue that Thompson’s notion of cinematic excess reveals that the film-photographic image need not be as transparent as Heidegger assumes and that a cinematic presentation of Being is possible. To explore this idea further the article considers the use of dead time by Michelangelo Antonioni, particularly in his film L’eclisse.