Nihilistic Cinema

Bresson’s The Devil, Probably.

The most depressing masterpiece, ever.

“To me Synecdoche, New York is too empathetic a film to pass for nihilism. It’s a humanist work casting a very warm eye on our (little and lonely, it confesses) lives.”

I must say I don’t see it as very humanistic or warm. I find SYNECDOCHE brutal, devastating, and hopeless, the most despairing film in Kaufman’s output to date.

But I don’t see how empathy runs against nihilism. Nihilism denies accessibility to meaning/knowledge, not the existence of emotional experience. It’s perfectly possible to create a deeply-felt, nihilistic film.

It’s perfectly possible to create a deeply-felt, nihilistic film.

I posit that there no feeling of ‘meaninglessness’ – which is a thought vs hopelessness, which is feeling.

Yes, “meaninglessness” is not a feeling. But that nevertheless does not deny that there are still human emotional responses to the concept of meaninglessness.

Too many posters on this thread are eliding these schools of thought:

Existentialism. Because the world is devoid of absolutes, each person is inescapably free to create meanings
out of the rubble of nothingness and indeterminacy. Existentialists are open to positivity, but
they often get trapped in their own personal hell (Sartre, Camus, Kafka, Kierkegaard).

Cynicism. Because individual experiences have been negatively charged, it is safe to assume that the
worst outcome will invariably come true. However, cynics are open to surprise. (Sedaris,
Letterman, George Saunders, Terry Gilliam).

Pessimism. Because the world has always been bad, it will always be bad. The glass is always . . .
Hell, there is no glass. Where’s my fucking glass! (“Salo,” “A Serbian Movie”).

Nihilism. Although there are no absolutes or meanings or consolations in this world, we are able
to shred the shards of extant culture and art in an attempt to find a new and genuine cultural
Whereas the Existentialist is resigned to the absence of transcendental meaning, the Nihilist
revels in the inchoate, formless, and malleable. (“Naked,” “Daisies,” “David Holzman’s Diary”).
The Nihilist does not have to be sorrowful, subversive, or sad.

Yes, of course there is an emotional response to the perception of a meaninglessness, but to call it hopeless is a reference to something outside of the experience of the perception i.e. meaninglessness is simply an absence of a structure that language is capable of forming into a totality – thus making meaninglessness ineffable.
I think 4 (2004) DIR Ilya Khrzhanovsky is as far as a film could go in that regard:

Exhilarating, infuriating, mesmerizing, baffling, and out-and-out crazy, 4 certainly doesn’t lack for ambition and outrageousness. Having caused quite a stir in its native Russia—where local censors objected to its bleak vision of the country as a cesspool of moral, spiritual, and physical decay (as well as, no doubt, its discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Putin’s imbibing habits)—Ilya Khrjanovsky’s debut is gonzo in the truest, wildest sense of the word, an assaultive allegorical dissection of Russia’s political and social disorder that vacillates so rowdily, and yet so fluidly, between dissonant tones, genres, and stylistic tactics that it achieves the considerable feat of keeping one both intensely enraptured and wholly off balance.

Little Murders (1971). It tries to pass for an offbeat black comedy here and there, but essentially it goes against pretty much everything that is typically juxtaposed to the nihilistic mentality.

The Fire Within (1963) by Malle and Fate (2001) by Demirkubuz…are also safe bets I think.

Another one that comes to my mind is Un homme que dort (1979) – although, I’ve got the feeling I’m venturing with this one, so it’d be good if someone can back me up here.

And what about all these slacker films of the 90s? (assuming apathy and withdrawal are giveaways of nihilism)

(assuming apathy and withdrawal are giveaways of nihilism)

I wouldn’t make that assumption, Flaneur. See my post above.

Nihilism. Although there are no absolutes or meanings or consolations in this world, we are able
to shred the shards of extant culture and art in an attempt to find a new and genuine cultural experience.
Whereas the Existentialist is resigned to the absence of transcendental meaning, the Nihilist
revels in the inchoate, formless, and malleable. (“Naked,” “Daisies,” “David Holzman’s Diary”).

apathy and withdrawal
ditto for hopelessness – those are societal feelings.
The Nihilist feels exhilaration in the freedom of Z’s inchoate, formless, and malleable.

The Thief aka Vor (1997)its original Russian title. A superb film capturing what must have been the the unimaginably difficult conditions in the immediate post WW2 era in The Soviet Union which suffered the loss of an estimated 23 million citizens.

Abandoned (2001) aka Torzók, a fine Hungarian film, and children are an easy way to poignancy, but if the last 10 minutes don’t leave you with a feeling of the utter pitilessness of life, nothing will.

I think ‘I stand alone’ is the best example of the last 30 years, i mean, with our current society and world. If anyone can give me a better example i would appreciate.

I do not see any of the Coen brothers films as nihilistic (they even make fun of so called nihilists in The Big Lebowski). In fact I see most of them as rather subversive, modern morality plays.

‘I stand alone’ is the best example…

Not sure; what are the other examples of the last 30 years?

Most action films have a nihilist streak and may be the real reason a lot of people watch them. Still remember watching Die Hard at a Manhattan preview and being surprised and scared when most of the audience cheered when the police armored car is blown to pieces…
Not to mention Die Hard 2- Die Harder in which a plane full of people (about 250?) is destroyed and none of the characters seems to give a damn.

Carmine Lorenzo: You’d be a surprised what I make in a month.
John McClane: If it’s more than a dollar ninety-eight I’d be very surprised.

A pleasure to find a thread on Nihilism, and I’d like to add a bit. Even though it’s over a year old, I’d still like to contribute considering that I’m baked and bored.

From a limited number of films that I’ve seen, there are indeed a few that had that kind of effect on me, regardless of their being nihilistic or not, although most of them were. I think one way to judge a nihilist film is the indifference of its characters, like the absurd hero of Camus. Once you realize the absurdity of it, you become indifferent. Sure Camus was not a nihilist but adsurdism is just the next door neighbor of nihilism. Speaking of this hopelessness begetting indifference, there are a few films that come to mind. For instance, Two-Lane Blacktop, I’d like to talk about this film.

To start with, there are no names for the lead characters. We have the driver, the mechanic, the girl and the GTO. Central characters are the driver and the mechanic. The driver has most of the screen time, and throughout the film, there is virtually no emotion on his face and what’s more, he speaks in a mechanical way. Most, if not all, of their conversation is centered on the car, its speed, its engine, parts etc. When, at one point, the GTO shows some traces of human-ness (which is again tricky, since he keeps changing his stories) and starts talking about his life that all of a sudden has fallen apart, and we are expecting that the driver would hug him and say some kind words, or at least simply say, “I’m sorry” and relate his story as well, the driver abruptly cuts him short saying, “I don’t want to hear about it. It’s not my problem.”

At one point, the driver makes advances toward this equally nihilistic girl that comes out of the blue and sits at the back of their car, no one objecting or even communicating and hitting the road, but even in his advancements the element of human touch is missing. It’s all mechanical and curt. The girl, to cut the long story short, doesn’t give a damn and eventually ditches them all and leaves with a total stranger – leaving her luggage behind because she could not lift it on the bike.

GTO is the one character which shows some traces of human suffering and yearning. He just wants someone to talk to and he would talk just about anything. He is probably not well accustomed to silence, or does not want to give up just yet. At one point, he is talking to some hitchhiker in his car about how he has been driving car on the roads all his life and how he just wants to settle down now and “If I’m not grounded pretty soon I’m gonna go into orbit.”

And the most interesting bit the race between the two cars and its outcome, but partly because I’ve already given out too many spoilers and party because it would require another essay and I’ve already taken too much of your space, I’ll leave it here.

But in the 70s, some pretty nihilistic films were made in Hollywood. The intoxication of the 60s seemed to wither away when the generation born into the best ever times at that point in history realized that it was just a short-lived illusion. Mallick’s Badlands is another one that comes to mind. And how about Apocalypse Now? I saw it some seven years ago so I’m missing a few images and connections but it definitely had that effect. Easy Rider, anyone?

But among other films, someone mentioned Herzog’s Strozek which I would say is not very far off. Nice pick. The Fire Within from Malle.

Someone also mentioned Melville’s Le Samurai and I’m really intrigued. Le Samurai was an excellent depiction of the absurd man with indifferent attitude and incomprehensible decisions. Oh and another important attribute of most, though not all, nihilist films – there is very little communication by the main character, which Alain Delon quite nailed!

I don’t remember the director’s name but Fires on the Plane (hope I got the name correct) is, in my opinion, quite nihilistic in nature but then again, I agree with people who say that Japanese cinema is at the forefront of nihilist cinema. Another film, Woman in the Dunes.

This Turkish movie, Yazgi, comes to mind and then there is Bergman’s Winter Light (minus, of course, the strangely hopeful character of Märta Lundberg, the school teacher). Haneke definitely manages to run a nihilistic chill down your spine and interestingly, he does it when no one is expecting it. Funny Games and The Seventh Continent. Sunset Limited gave that feeling somewhere during the second half but its ending was definitely not nihilistic, at least not for the viewer.

Several adaptations of literature come to mind but I don’t want to go in that domain as the list would be lengthy and I purely want to focus on cinema.

That’s what things like cinema do to introverts like me, make me talk hopelessly. There’s still so much.

Double Indemnity

Having looked over the various films posited as nihilistic above, I’d like to mention an important distinction:

In how many cases are the films themselves or a director actually espousing a nihilistic philosophy of amorality and utter skepticism OR is it more a case of a movie featuring a nihilistic CHARACTER?

Without going into specific cases, I’d argue that the truly nihilistic film is pretty rare but that nihilistic CHARACTERS are often present in movies, frequently as villains or antagonists. It’s a shame that Nietzsche never wrote screenplays! :-)

The cool thing about Japanese cinema is the nihilist is the hero.

And Kitano might be an example of a nihilist filmmaker, because the only manner in which one gains any information is purely through the subjectivity of interpersonal relationships, and even those become meaningless by the end of the film. But even then, we would be limiting ourselves to basically just Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Sonantine, Getting Any? and maybe Outrage. The rest of his career is very anti-nihilist.

I’m agreeing with Frank – a film can’t be nihilistic, but a character can be.
A film can’t be meaningless.

Have you seen Getting Any?, Mr. Peabody?

Have you seen Ilya Khrzhanovsky"s 4 Mr. Dushane?

The nihilistic character operates within a meaningful context – the structured space called a film.
.

Consider these choices by counterorder.com: http://www.counterorder.com/nihilismlinks.html#3

“The nihilistic character operates within a meaningful context – the structured space called a film.”

Ah, in this context you destroyed me, but I never considered 4 a nihilist film. Good job, Mr. Peabody. I truly considered it a revisionist family drama, made for a generation that hasn’t had a father, so we don’t understand sincerity, and see it as a challenge. Family as a deconstruction of societal flaccidity, right?

But again, have you seen Getting Any?? There is no true meaning in this revisionist film of many genres, beyond it being just a film about getting fucked, which never actually happens, in the film, at least…

I wish I had Mr. Johnson to back me up when I said Violent Cop is a meaningless film beyond the subjective humanity, but I imagine he’s busy.

@UMER

Excellent analysis of Two Lane Blacktop. You hit all the right notes there. Also, the Japanese film you were talking about is called Fires on the Plain. I haven’t seen it yet, though.

@FALDERAL
I love Beat Takeshi, but I don’t really see his work being nihilistic; although some of his movies may have depressing endings, I believe they seem to reinforce the beauty of life. I always think of Kitano’s movies as a very deadpan (and sometimes slapstick) humor not very dissimilar to Stranger Than Paradise or The Match Factory Girl. Just my 2 cents.

I echo The Seventh Continent‘s inclusion into this thread. It is bleak in the most depressing sense of the word. I think what makes it so bleak is that we never really get a view inside the characters’ views, their motivations (except for in the carwash scene).

Having seen Enter the Void last night, that one leaped into mind when I saw the title of this thread (though it was already in mind). As I read through this thread, I was surprised to see only one mention of it by someone who called it the opposite of nihilist, in that it suggests the reality of reincarnation. I would argue that incarnation of any kind is no argument against nihilism. It seems a valid, coherent argument that a meaningless universe with finite components might keep subjecting a finite number of souls to the same meaningless shit over and over. Mind you I don’t buy that, but it seems like a coherent argument to me and one consistent with what I view as ETV’s nihilism. I mean, even the name of the film shouts “Nothing!” It could be called Re-Enter the Void.

Enter the Void isn’t a film I would call nihilistic. The protagonist is killed and wanders Tokyo as a transmigrating spirit observing those he’s left behind, while also flashing back to moments with them from his past. All of this is along the way in his journey to reincarnation.

It’s a film with very Eastern (Buddist/Taoist) beliefs.

Buddhist belief does not preclude nihilism. Far from it. It may be a spirit hovering over Tokyo, but it’s observing a life that came close to having no meaning. It’ may be reentering a body, but while this suggests it will have another chance, it’s not clear to me that watching this life again and the effects of its death on the lives it’s left behind has equipped it at all to learn and grow. It could just be coming back to keep making the same mistakes over and over, or to be subjected to the same cruel twists of fate over and over, subject to the same appetites and needs over and over. Or even different twists, appetites and needs. But nothing suggests that life is anything other than sensation. I don’t see any hope in this film. I see just blankness.

Well, there is always hope (where you see blankness I see a blank slate), but certainly in the life he is leaving, there was not much. Only the threadbare and regretful relationship with his sister.

In the Stargate sequence of 2001, which very obviously inspired this film, the “soul” goes beyond this earth, beyond its own shallow view of it’s life on earth, and the film ends with the image of a fetus in space and the sound of a high note—a harmonious chord. Now that is hope! The soul in ETV never gets beyond its own life. It gets no more height than what’s required to stay hooked into the dull, hopeless soap opera (the psychedelic melodrama Noe called it) of its previous existence. That soul learns nothing. It’s doomed as far as I can tell.