Tag: theology

Dark (2017-19): God is Time?

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The intricate yet meticulously plotted story spans over two centuries, four generations, three family names (about twenty major characters) and three parallel worlds - all cramped into twenty-five hours. I had to constantly look for the complete family tree online when it became impossible to recollect character relationships. Rooted in modern German thoughts, the philosophical drama quotes, sometimes excessively, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein and Martin Heidegger, the Germans who have shaped the modern understanding of reality, that reality is not necessarily deterministic, and how human will constitutes the phenomenal world apart from the inscrutable nominal reality.

Beyond Meaning: Film-Being and The Production of Presence

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In this essay, I contrast Gumbrecht’s insight with the cognitivist and Daniel Frampton’s phenomenological views on cinematic experiences. Borrowing scenes from Terrance Malik’s film The Tree of Life, I propose that cinematic expressions can create presence besides communicating stable, concrete meanings that mostly engage one’s mind. I side with Gumbrecht and argue that merely attributing or reconstructing the meaning of a film, cognitively or phenomenologically, limits the philosophising potential of the medium. After all, film intrinsically philosophises as a physical reality, or film-being.

God’s Own Country (2017): An Earnest, Affecting Depiction of Humanity

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The 2017 British independent film God's Own Country is about the Yorkshire countryside, two homosexual men, plenty of sheep and a sense of nostalgia. Filled with the ambition of timelessness, the story, or a dreamy fairytale, does not happen in a specified time. Characters speak with a strong regional accent, and I struggle to catch every word. But that turns out to be a minor concern: the film does not demand its audience to catch every word; instead, it invites them for a visually intimate experience with two blessed young men falling in love, alongside an earnest, affecting depiction of humanity.

The Tree of Life (2011): Where are You? How Can I Endure This Frail Existence?

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10/10

Every great story is a stroy of pain, and The Tree of Life is no exception. It is a story of unbearable and chronic discomfort: the pain of life, growth and death, or to put them together, the pain of mortal existence. It is difficult to reivew this movie in one short blog post, but I think it is worth a try, for the movie deals with the most fundamental pain of human existence, or should I say the worst kind of pain among all.

The New Cosmic Story by John Haught (2017): A Revival of Cosmic Optimism?

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I find Haught's book a worthy addition to the literature dealing with religious awakening and its conflict with modern sciences and meaning in a cosmic perspective. The ambitious, exciting book would have been clearer if Haught can explain in details why he makes certain associations, and why those associations are indeed true besides their psychological and religious appeal.