Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and he was to develop some of the most important twentieth century work on the philosophy of language and meaning. Jarman’s experimental biography is highly theatrical, interspersing biography, soliliquies, lavish fantasy and dream sequences. The film traces Wittgenstein’s life through World War I; his career as a school-teacher and eventually as an academic at Cambridge University; to his final abandonment of classical philosophy and the development of a challenging deconstruction of language which was to bring him in conflict with more positivist philosophies. Scripted by renowned English academic, Prof. Terry Eagleton, the film revolves around a series of arguments and discussions between Wittgenstein, Betrand Russell and their academic peers. This intelligent film links abstract discourse to the politics of everyday life. In the long run, Wittgenstein’s break with the hierarchy at Cambridge is not only a product of intellectual speculation but rooted in his problematic and alienated homosexuality which could not find direct expression in the higly austere and conventional environment of “high academia”. Though this film demands rigorous attention it is also a highly stylised and beautiful exercise in the possibilities of experimental cinema. With Tilda Swinton.