Metaphysics and the Moving Image : : Paradise Exposed / / Trevor Mowchun.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE Arts 2023
• VerfasserIn: Mowchun, Trevor,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2023]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (262 p.) :; 80 B/W illustrations 80 B&W images

Examines the work of transcendental filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Terence Malick using a metaphysical frameworkStages a dialogue between film and philosophy on the question of metaphysicsTheorizes the workings of a metaphysical film style" and analyses its varied characteristics through close readings of filmsSituates the moving image in the context of the visual arts (i.e., photography and painting) as part of the history of aesthetic disclosureSpeculates on the value of a return of metaphysics for a post-metaphysical ageMetaphysics and the Moving Image is an exploration of how the medium of film inherits metaphysics, the ancient tradition of Western thought, and why it does so at the very moment philosophy sought to overcome it. As the age of metaphysics comes to a close with the Nietzschean “death of God” crisis of nihilism, the emergence of film gives birth to a new absolute value, a secular re-enchantment of the world, or ‘the world in its own image’. Film radically transforms the metaphysical paradigm from rational speculation through concepts to mechanical revelation through images and sounds—a revelation vital to the capacity for the art of film to enlighten and enthrall.In this book, 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 the aftermath of the ‘end of metaphysics’, questions about being, value and truth find compelling and open-ended responses in cinema. "

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- 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 -- Chapter Two. The Evolution of the Concept of “World” from Philosophy to Film -- Chapter Three. Paradise Exposed: Psychic Automatism in Film 103 Primer: “While the will is off its watch” -- Chapter Four. Nature, Whose Death Shines a Light: Exteriority and Overexposure in The Thin Red Line -- Chapter Five “Mother, I am Dumb …”: The Reevaluation of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Turin Horse -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index