Wittgenstein (1993)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Derek Jarman

Writers:

Ken Butler (writer)
Terry Eagleton (writer)
(more)

Release Date:

17 September 1993 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History

Plot:

A dramatization, in modern theatrical style, of the life and thought of the Viennese-born, Cambridge-educated...

Plot Keywords:

Genius | Homosexual | Philosopher | Philosophy | Gay Interest

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Clancy Chassay	...	Young Wittgenstein
Jill Balcon	...	Leopoldine Wittgenstein
Sally Dexter	...	Hermine Wittgenstein
Gina Marsh	...	Gretyl Wittgenstein
Vanya Del Borgo	...	Helene Wittgenstein
Ben Scantlebury	...	Hans Wittgenstein
Howard Sooley	...	Kurt Wittgenstein
David Radzinowicz	...	Rudolf Wittgenstein
Jan Latham-Koenig	...	Paul Wittgenstein
Tony Peake	...	Tutor
Michelle Wade	...	Tutor
Tanya Wade	...	Tutor
Roger Cook	...	Tutor
Anna Campeau	...	Tutor
Mike O'Pray	...	Tutor
Nabil Shaban	...	Martian
Karl Johnson	...	Ludwig Wittgenstein
Michael Gough	...	Bertrand Russell
Tilda Swinton	...	Lady Ottoline Morrell
Donald McInnes	...	Hairdresser
Hussein McGraw
Christopher Hughes		(as Chris Hughes)
Budge Tremlett
Aisling Magill	...	Schoolgirl
Perry Kadir
John Quentin	...	Maynard Keynes
Kevin Collins	...	Johnny
Lynn Seymour	...	Lydia Lopokova
Ashley Russell	...	Student
Stuart Bennett
David Mansell	...	Student
Steven Downes	...	Student
Peter Fillingham	...	Student
Fayez Samara	...	Student
Samantha Cones
Kate Temple
Sarah Graham
Layla Alexander Garrett	...	Sophie Janovskaya

Directed by
Derek Jarman

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Ken Butler		writer
Terry Eagleton		writer
Derek Jarman		writer

Produced by
Tariq Ali	....	producer
Takashi Asai	....	executive producer
Ben Gibson	....	executive producer
Eliza Mellor	....	executive producer in charge of production

Original Music by
Jan Latham-Koenig

Cinematography by
James Welland

Film Editing by
Budge Tremlett

Art Direction by
Annie La Paz

Costume Design by
Sandy Powell

Makeup Department
Morag Ross	....	hair stylist
Morag Ross	....	makeup artist

Production Management
Anna Campeau	....	production manager
Gina Marsh	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Richard Hewitt	....	second assistant director
Davina Nicholson	....	first assistant director

Art Department
Kevin Rowe	....	art department

Sound Department
Toby Calder	....	sound editor
Paul Carr	....	dubbing mixer
George Richards	....	sound

Other crew
Ken Butler	....	associate director

Production Companies

• BFI Production
• Bandung Productions
• Channel Four Films
• Uplink Co.

Distributors

• Zeitgeist Films (1993) (USA) (theatrical)
• Cinemagi (Sweden) (video)
• Dolmen (2007) (Italy) (DVD)
• Kino Video (USA) (VHS)

Runtime:

Sweden:75 min

Country:

Japan | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:M | Finland:S | Sweden:7 | UK:12 | Hong Kong:IIA

Company:

BFI Production

Missed the Interesting Part

I was marching through comprehensive viewing of the Greenaway section in our local art video store, and got into an argument with the proprietor. He felt that Greenaway was excessive pretentious and juvenile and suggested this film as `real' intelligent filmmaking. I really wanted to discover a new director, so watched with expectation.

About the actual art of the filmmaking, I can report that this to be completely mundane. The technique is of stationary filming of a staged play with no risk and little imagination.

But the topic has real promise! Wittgenstein is among the dozen most fascinating men of ideas who ever lived. He anticipated the core ideas about logic and language that are commonplace today. But he was profoundly not influential. All these ideas were reinvented by independent means because his explications were so abstruse. I believe them to be necessarily so, and we still don't appreciate the full ambiguities he noted.

This is grand, fascinating stuff, but in this play we get the most trivial inklings of his middle period. How sad.

Independent of the ideas, his life is remarkable. He was rich and gave it away. He absolutely mastered a strain of philosophical thought and was universally celebrated (though not understood). He tossed it away, disclaiming all his ideas and starting over as his own most powerful detractor. And he did this thrice! He went from the protection of the university to hovels and degradation multiple times. Along the way he designed one of the most puzzling houses on the planet. This is great, great stuff.

But this film is motivated by a politico-sexual agenda, so while watering down the great intellectual and physical swings, ascribes them to repressed guilt of his sexuality. Wittgenstein would be appalled, I think, to have his great projects and discipline so debased. In fact, he seemed to have repressed guilt about everything he could conceive, and among these homosexuality was a lesser driver because the environment was so accepting, even encouraging. Alan Turing of the next generation, is a different, more apt story.

The report then is that this is not cinematically interesting, and some great drama has been missed in order to make a minor -- and perhaps untrue -- point.