Wittgenstein

What is wrong with people? Wittgenstein had an eventful, interesting life and was one of the greatest philosophers to ever live. He deserves so much better than this pretentious, pointless disaster of a film.

Now, how the hell am I supposed to review this one...? Ermmmmmyyyeezzzz... okay, so imagine you're attending a seminar on Wittgenstein at your local U, and indeed the professor does cover some of the stuff you'd expect but for some reason he isn't wearing pants and he keeps turning the lights off. It's all sort of interesting, undeniably different and weirdly offputting. Another unrankable film from Jarman.

Points for humiliating Russell.

Both the content, Wittgenstein's life and his evolving philosophy, and the filmmaking approach, film as theatre, are promising but Jarman falls well short of fulfilling this potential. The theatricality comes across as overly performative and neither Wittgenstein nor his ideas take on a compelling form.

very obviously written by a literary theorist

I found the majority of this film recorded from an (obviously) Americanized british TV channel onto a VHS in the early 90's, and when I saw it, its isolated theatrical aesthetic won me over.

Russell was miscast.

a very strange and often hilarious philosophical elegy where everything is set against stark black backgrounds. i have no idea as to the accuracy of jarman's portrayal of wittgenstein's work.

I felt like I was listening to an awesome band's "greatest hits" collection. You get all of his most well known quotations and anecdotes about his life strung together one after another. It's fun but does little to deepen your understanding of the material.

Philosophy yay!

Having studied philosophy I think I can safely say that judging by Jarman's emphases, he does not have a good grasp of Wittgenstein's thought OR of his biography. Now it may be argued that Jarman's intentions were to make some sort of an avant-garde half-fictionalized thingie with no real connection to Wittgenstein, but then what's the point. This is an insubstantial if moderately interesting piece of cinema. It's strange that Terry Eagleton scripted this.

Un-Biopic at its finest 75 minutes.