Late in his career famous director, Roberto Rossellini, held a press conference, and said three startling words: “Cinema is dead.” What followed was Rossellini finishing his career making history film after history film. He picked a historical subject and filmed it. He clearly went through a crisis, which makes it all the more interesting to watch his film, Cartesius, which focuses on René Descartes, a philosopher, who seemed to be going through a lifelong existential crisis. Descartes struggles with his quest for truth, having to go against the common beliefs of the time. Despite their similarity that they both are going through a crisis, Rossellini picked him as his subject, for their differences. Rossellini puts himself in the position of the people who Descartes must defy. Rossellini begins to question his crisis, by using Descartes as the hero to convince him that he is wrong. He does this by showing the conflict between the new and the old, dealing with reason, and presenting someone who goes against the rules that are assigned to him.

Descartes’ first argument against Roberto Rossellini is that the new is not always inferior to the old. In the film, Aristotle represents the old, and Galileo represents the new. Anytime Descartes mentions Galileo or any other great thinker of the time, someone asks him if he really can compare them to the great Aristotle. Rossellini sets the film up so, the audience can see the absurdity in this question. Galileo has technology, and has Aristotle’s ideas to build on. How can his ideas not be more accurate? But yet everyone continues to laugh at Descartes. So it appears that the man who declared the art of film as dead, is actually making an argument that the films of the future will be able to build upon the films of the past, and while those films do not lose value, the future ones do not either. Directly contradicting himself, it appears that Rossellini, let’s some optimism about film seep into his thoughts.

Another of the main points of the film, and one very important in Descarte’s life, is the idea of reason. Descarte’s true quest was to use reason to answer life’s questions. He was tired with having to take a leap of faith with every explanation of life’s mysteries. He wanted mathematical and scientific evidence to back up everything he thought. Rossellini talks a lot about reason, but never really gives very many specifics for the time period. It’s as if, every discussion on reason, is just Rossellini saying to himself, “Come on. Be reasonable.” Rossellini was clearly struggling with emotion over reason, as he went through his cinematic crisis. For whatever reason he was frustrated with his art form, but always in the back of his mind that voice of reason was telling him that his attitude was wrong.

The final hope that Rossellini shows through Descartes is the idea of someone going against the rules that are currently assigned to them. Descartes openly defied the Church teachings, something that was both necessary for his writings, and what got his writings banned. Still he believed that the only way for progress to occur was to ignore or, as he put it more politically correct, “reinterpret” the Bible. The Bible says that the sun moves around the earth, but Descartes is not willing to accept this. He used reason to prove otherwise, and he is going to stick to what he thinks is correct, no matter who says otherwise. Descartes can be interpreted as a representation of the French New Wave. Filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard and Alain Renais were a breath of fresh air to cinema in the 60’s. They threw out the rulebook, and wrote a new one. Is this the sign of the death of an art form, or just a rebirth? Rossellini announced the death of cinema right as these filmmakers were just starting out. By the time he made Cartesius in the early 70’s these filmmakers had proven their genius. Rossellini was starting to wonder if cinema was really dead or if the opposite was actually happening.

Rossellini questions his cinematic crisis, by having Descartes argue for new thought, establish the importance of reason, and rewrite the rules with his ideas. Sadly the film ends with Descartes book being forbidden by the Church and Descartes not only accepting this, but also assuming it was for the best. Just when Rossellini began to become optimistic about cinema, the pessimism sank back in, and his crisis continued. Be it philosopher or director, some people are just meant to go through life in existential crisis.