Film can’t philosophise (and neither can philosophy): Introduction to a non-philosophy of cinema

Abstract

Giorgio Agamben and the films of Tony Scott; Emmanuel Levinas and the films of Michael Haneke; Jean-Luc Nancy and Claire Denis; Slavoj Žižek and Kieslowski; Gilles Deleuze and Godard (or Alain Badiou and Godard, Jacques Derrida and Godard, Jean-François Lyotard and Godard). Linkages come readily to mind for a philosophically-inclined viewer when looking at certain kinds of film. When Michael Haneke’s Caché (France, 2005), for example, finally reveals who is the blackmailer, who is filming the guilty, with the answer, ʼno one’, some cannot help but think of Levinas. His idea of a universal responsibility before the Other that comes with human existence as such, seems to chime with Caché‘s refusal to apportion the usual roles of good and bad, yet without at the same time denying that a terrible wrong has occurred. To exist before another is to be guilty, to be responsible for that Other’s life. No one is guilty because every one is guilty.