Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein is born in Vienna into a very rich family. He studies engineering, then becomes curious about the foundations of mathematics and goes to Cambridge. He stays at the front through the war and writes a book there, at the end of which he believes he has solved every problem of philosophy. Then he teaches in a village school, works as a gardener, gives away his inheritance, returns to Cambridge and refutes his own book. The film tells all this without using a single real location; every scene happens in a black void. Derek Jarman directs. The screenplay was written by the literary theorist Terry Eagleton; Jarman rewrote it before and during shooting, changing the style and the structure while keeping much of the dialogue. Karl Johnson, Michael Gough, Tilda Swinton and Clancy Chassay are in the cast. Tariq Ali produced. It is a British production. The budget was three hundred thousand pounds. There are no sets; the money went on costumes, actors and lights, and the scenes are framed like dark paintings. A boy dressed as a Martian comes in and out of the narrative and speaks straight to the audience. The matter it treats is the limit of language; the difference between the philosopher's two periods is argued out on screen. The film does not hide Wittgenstein's homosexuality or his solitude. The narrative gives the biography in order but does not tell it realistically. Jarman made this in the years when he was beginning to lose his sight, and he died a year later. The ending closes with a fable. Its limit is access; it is closed to anyone without some philosophy, the form is abstract, and the pace is a theatre pace. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental cinema and the history of ideas. Who it is not for: it is abstract, closed, and the ending sad.