Metaphysics and the Moving Image

Examines the work of transcendental filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Terence Malick using a metaphysical framework

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Metaphysics and the Moving Image is an exploration of how the medium of film inherits metaphysics, the ancient tradition of Western thought, and why it does so at the very moment philosophy sought to overcome it. As the age of metaphysics comes to a close with the Nietzschean “death of God” crisis of nihilism, the emergence of film gives birth to a new absolute value, a secular re-enchantment of the world, or ‘the world in its own image’. Film radically transforms the metaphysical paradigm from rational speculation through concepts to mechanical revelation through images and sounds—a revelation vital to the capacity for the art of film to enlighten and enthrall.