Existentialism In Movies

Numerous times people have come up to me and asked me what existentialism is. That is not exactly something that a quick answer could do justice too. A while back I was asked the question in my local Starbucks. I gave a quick answer and later wished I could have thought of other things off the cuff.

It just so happened that my grandson had gotten the Pixar animated movie, Megamind, and I sat down to watch it with him that night. It was a true tale of existentialism, and if I would have known, I would have surely told this person at Starbucks to check it out.

It is a movie about an arch-villain and the superhero---rivals all their lives, good vs evil, until they both find themselves in the midst of their own individual existential crisis. The movie primarily focuses on Megamind, the evil arch-villain as he learns that the choices he makes has consequences. But the moral is one of existential freedom: that it doesn't matter how you were born, or what you are, that it is all about the choices you make and that actions you take, and that you are free to become who you want to be.

More recently I watched the movie, Metro Manila, on Netflix and was impressed with the existential nature of that movie. There are tons of movies out there right now that deal explore the problem of existentialism.

Here (in my next post) is the review I wrote of Matro Manila, and the existential philosophy it portrays:

 

The Existential Philosophy of the Sean Ellis movie, Metro Manila

Currently on Netflix, there is a film that provides a great exploration in existential philosophy. It is a Philippine film made in 2013 by the director, Sean Ellis, and titled, Metro Manila. It is the tale of Oscar (played by Jake Macapagal), a rice farmer who, after a drop in the price of rice, doesn’t make enough money from the sale of his crops to even buy seed for the next planting season, let alone have enough to pay for his family’s subsistence till another harvest. He is therefore forced to take his young wife (played by the lovely, Althea Vega) and two kids to Manila in hopes of finding work. Their story, which on the surface seems as foreign and as distant from our own as is the Philippines itself, is really a tale of the existentialist realities faced by all of humanity in the Modern Age.

The movie provides rich views of the beauty of the capital of the Philippines with its incredible sunrises and sunsets, and the tropical greenery that grows here and there within this over-crowded Philippine metropolis. Yet it also shows other aspects of Manila as it truly is—not the glorified tourist spots—but the crowded, polluted, impoverished, rest of the city, including the slums and shanty towns. More importantly, the film provides a taste of the life that Manila presents to the poor innocent souls, with barely a peso to their names, which show up looking for whatever they can find to support themselves and their family. Manila victimizes and takes advantage of these people at every turn, and almost all the pathetic survivors never really escape their impoverished conditions.

Manila is not some quaint little third-world city, as many Americans (pining for a by-gone era of exploration and exotic tourism) would have it, wooden and adobe buildings, little changed from the very early 1900’s. No, Manila is a metropolis of the Modern Age, and the Modern Age, as it is today, has truly become the Age of Nihilism. And Modern Age nihilism is almost no where as evident here in America as it is in places like Manila. One thing that struck me as sad, when I lived there in the late 80’s and into the 90’s, was how the sidewalks and windows were filled with people who simply spent the day staring blankly at the endless traffic passing through the streets before them. I couldn’t believe what a pathetic waste of time their lives had become, until it dawned on me that when all life around you has lost its meaning, what else is their left to do? (Coincidentally, years later I happened to pass through an American slum and was surprised to find the same thing here too.)

Like anywhere else tainted by the Modern Age, the Filipinos themselves do not realize how nihilistic their lives are. There is the church, for example—the motifs of which we continuously see repeated in this film. Any Filipino would respond that the church gives meaning to their lives. However as deeply religious as the Filipinos are, in the end we find that Christian values and ethics throughout Manila are superficial at best. Consider, for example, the typical Filipino taxi driver, who continuously pets the Mother Mary figurine strategically placed atop his dashboard, who makes the sign of a cross with every church he passes, and who, without a doubt, knows all too well that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ is one of the ‘Ten Commandments’ of his faith. Yet at the same time he will gladly break the law and proclaim that his meter is broken and demand an exorbitant fee for his services.

Though we cannot really fault the Philippine people for such indiscretions of faith and morality, as this film clearly points out, it is, in the end, what becomes necessary to survive the never-ending existential dilemmas that make up everyday life in this nihilistic metropolis.

Yet despite the harsh realities of life in both the real Manila, and the film, the main characters, Oscar and his wife, Mai, in a Kierkegaardian either/or commitment, struggle hard to be true to their own core values and beliefs. Despite their innocence and provincial nature, they alone are what Kierkegaard would have labeled as genuine individuals. In other words, they maintain their existential freedom to hold on dear to their own values rather than those of the crowd, or those in authority—in this way they are more fully individuated than any of the other characters in the film. And in an equally Kierkegaardian fashion, their faith at least provides hope through their struggles. At one of their lowest points after arriving in Manila, with no food or money, Mai tells Oscar, “Sometimes the only thing left to hold onto is the blade of a knife. But in God we trust. And I know he will not forsake us.”

But don’t assume this to be a film about the triumph of religious belief over adversity, or even a story of the glory of God. Instead we see the unfolding of the existential experience of man as he struggles through his physical existence. As Sartre would tell us, there is no real proof of God within the physical world, so whether god exists or not, does not concern existentialism. (And even when Oscar’s young daughter realizes that one day her father could even die, and asks where he will go, then rather than delve into the non-physical tenets of religious belief, Oscar answers that he will still live in her heart.)

Again, religion is a very big part of Philippine society. Therefore, the friendly middle aged man who befriends Oscar and offers to help him and his family find a place to live and thereby steals all their money (as rent for a place he and a friend have no authority to rent out) is undoubtedly just as religious and trusting in God as Oscar and his wife. It is no accident, or convenient diversion, in the story line that as this conman takes them to the supposed apartment for rent, they struggle to pass through, in the opposite direction, the massive crowd of a well known religious procession, during a festival in the Manila district of the Quiapo Cathedral. Undoubtedly, any of the antagonists in the film were just as religious as the two protagonists. Yet, as I stated earlier, it is only Oscar and Mai that are genuine individuals, true to themselves.

The story indirectly builds upon a fictionalized version of a true news story of existential dilemma and crisis. On May 25, 2000, a certain Reginald Chua, boarded a domestic Philippine Airlines flight with a homemade parachute, a gun, and a grenade. As the flight neared Manila, he proceeded to commit armed robbery, having the passengers put all their valuables into a bag. He then ordered the pilot to descend to 6000 feet and depressurize the cabin. However, once the cabin door was opened, and he looked out of the plane, he became scared and clung to the door. A stewardess remedied the situation by pushing him out of the plane. Three days later his body was found, almost entirely buried vertically in mud, head first. What drove him to commit such a drastic act was the murder of his father, a business owner, and the subsequent threats on the family business by the business rivals that killed him. Bills piled up, the family went into debt, he felt that he had to do something to support his family, and move out of the community away from his father’s killers. The senior pilot on the flight reported that Reginald was crying, and in his objective opinion, seemed deranged.

In the version we find in Metro Manila, Oscar knew the perpetrator whose fictionalized name was Alfred Santos. He was, according to Oscar, “…a hard working, honest man.” Alfred’s father owned a silk factory, rather than the corn mill in the real life version. Oscar, worked at the factory, but after the murder of Alfred’s father, the workers were threatened by the killers, and stopped working. The factory closed down. He watched Alfred’s family, the bills piling up, the debt rising, no income coming in, and everyday facing the jests and taunts of his father’s killers. He understood why Alfred would commit armed robbery, stating that desperate times call for desperate actions, and desperate actions get you killed. “What choice did he have?”

The existentialist, Martin Heidegger, believed that it is the mortal finality of life that gives it meaning. Death is an ever-present theme in Metro Manila, just as it is in the real life Metro Manila. Death was undoubtedly a very real possibility for Reginald Chua as he made the choice to board Flight 812 back in 2000, with the intent to hold it up with no other escape than to jump from the plane in his homemade and untested parachute. The real life Manila is filled with death, and even has its areas known as killing fields, where criminals, and local and national government thugs are known to have ‘salvaged’ individuals (as ‘hits’ are impersonally referred to in Manila, as if the objectified victims were nothing more than bits of scrap metal and garbage).

The constant possibility of death struck me as an inescapable potential consequence when I lived in Manila, as even a popular beach resort just outside of Manila where one could find a temporary respite from the struggles of existence, offered such grave dangers as sharks, barracudas, cone snails, and box jellyfish. Divers came from all over the world to meet an untimely and agonizingly painful death in the beautiful waters there, as there were no emergency medical facilities close enough to even try to rescue such unfortunate victims.

But death, as the ultimate self-sacrifice, is a recurring theme in existentialism, such as in the case of Camus who wrote that suicide is the one truly serious philosophical question. He then went on to conclude that, “a reason for living, is also an excellent reason for dying.” Either way represents a sacrifice. Indeed, Reginald Chua faced self-sacrifice as he stood looking in to the abyss he had created for himself, from the open door of a jetliner speeding through the atmosphere at 6,000 feet. At the last minute, he chickened out of making that last ultimate existential leap of either/or, until a stewardess coldly made the choice for him.

Oscar and Mai are faced with differing degrees of self-sacrifice. It is from this that we watch their continuous struggle to maintain their own values, despite the pressures of those around them. Mai ends up working in a hostess club, seducing male patrons just enough to get them to buy drinks. Oscar takes on what is truly a very dangerous job in Manila: driving armored cars. But it seems clear that, more than any other character, their own self-sacrifice is largely untainted by self-interest and greed. Oscar explains that the problem with Alfred’s armed robbery aboard an airliner is that it was based on his own dreams, that of becoming a parachutist (which was the case of the real Reginald Chua), in addition to saving his family. Oscar’s conclusion is that such drastic actions should have never been based on a dream, but only the fact that, “…there was no other way out.”

But Oscar felt personally responsible for the death of Alfred as he too left the factory with the other workers upon the threats, “…we should have stood up to the threats and defended the family.” Our choices inevitably have consequences on others.

We see in Oscar and Mai a provincial naïveté that is out of place in the Modern World. It is filled with a compassion for living things that we no longer find in the greed filled, cold-hearted, and overly objectivistic morass that is the humanity in Modern cities such as Manila. Even his daughter comes to the rescue of a small kitten, as it is maliciously harassed by several young boys in a Manila slum. This is in contrast to the other characters in the film who, while appearing to show compassion and empathy towards the struggles of Oscar and his family, are really just acting out personal self-centered designs, leaving this poor family from the countryside as victims yet again.

Yet this lack of compassion among the other characters is also symptomatic of their alienation from their own selves. The realities of their existential condition has hardened these people to the point where, for example, we watch a widow, having just been informed of her husband’s death, yet is immediately ready to offer sexual favors to secure her husband’s illegally obtained treasure.

Sartre teaches us that, in the existential world we find ourselves in, where there is no real physical proof of a higher being to save us from ourselves, it is every individual’s duty to make life better for all others. But to do so, requires a selfless caring for life and for others. While so many others seem caring and ready to help, it is only Oscar’s family (and admittedly, possibly a lone young woman in the slums, and a government doctor) that displays such selfless caring. From the rice dealers in their home province of Banaue, to the people they meet in Manila—almost everyone acts in self-interest, and those who do not, have not interacted with the family enough to take advantage of them.

Finally, Metro Manila is a story of existential freedom, which is the core tenet of existentialism, regardless of whether it is touted by an atheist, agnostic, or even a theologian. Oscar and Mai, despite the moral dilemmas that are constantly thrust upon them, try their best to never compromise their own values, and when things get too far out of hand, rather than giving in, they exercise their freedom to escape the situation. No matter how big and complicated the trap is, existentialists tell us that there is always a way out. We always have the freedom to be who we are, and we always have the freedom to do what it takes to try to escape.

It would be easy to dismiss this movie and its philosophical exploration, as relating to a simple banana republic culture. But the Director and co-author, Sean Ellis, is British. And the problem of the Philippines, simply reflects, and perhaps exaggerates, the rest of the world around it. For example, I used to consider the comedic farce that is Philippine politics to be very entertaining, but more importantly, unique to the Philippines. But then came the US presidential elections of 2008 and 2012, complete with all the hypocrisy, phoniness, shallow values, greed, and exploitation that made Philippine politics so entertaining to an outsider, yet horribly pathetic for the Philippine people.

On the other hand, one may protest that the movie is nothing like us in our comfortable Western first world lives. After all, how many people do we know in Western First World nations that would hold up a commercial airliner? How easily we forget the hijackings of the 1960’s, or the individual who disappeared with a suitcase of money after jumping out of a commercial airliner over Washington state. And think of how many people we deal with that work solely out of self-interest and greed. The people this poor peasant family meet upon entering the major metropolis of Metro Manila are just like the people any poor family or individual risks meeting upon entering any big city, in any nation.

The problems of the Modern World that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and other existentialist philosophers identified, are far more problematic today. We live in a world that is overly focused on the physical. This means that it is a world ruled by rationalism and objectivism, to the detriment of subjectivism—the individual. Look around you and you will spot that values and morals are superficial at best, that greed is the primary driving force, that many of us continuously struggle to stay true to ourselves and hold on to our values; but that far more of us are afraid of our own existential freedom, and respond to this fear by giving in to the will to power of others, by allowing others to tell us what to believe, what to desire, and how to live. Alienation from one’s own self, is rarely recognized, but is extremely pandemic, affecting just about everyone in the Modern World.

It is hard to watch this movie and not come up with our own alternative solutions to the more serious struggles they face. Yet that is the thing with subjective experience and existential freedom—they made the choices they did, by living directly in the conditions they did, and the subjective perspectives that those conditions provided them. In a true existentialist manner, they took responsibility for those choices, and understood that the consequences were the result of their own choices and actions. Not all of us will have the same ethics, values, beliefs, or struggles as this young couple. But all of us will make our own life choices, and live with the consequences of those choices. All of us can be true to ourselves as authentic individuals. Oscar, Mai, and even their little girl, provide valuable lessons in existentialism for all of us as we face our own struggles living in the Modern World.

 

Here is the trailer to Metro Manila:

http://youtu.be/Qfk3zA_vUeI

 

A few others:

Fight Club
Big Lebowski
Waking Life
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

 

The Lego Movie is another great existentialist film, and I would think that if Kierkegaard were alive today, he could have even written the 2009 movie, The Adjustment Bureau. The theme is everywhere in movies: The Hunger Game trilogy, Divergent, which was followed by Insurgent. These movies are all about the individual, making existential choices, and rising up against the crushing onslaught of the collective will to power.

I suspect that this may have something to do with the Credit Crisis. Existentialism was largely a continental European philosophy. While it was already an old philosophy, Europe did not face its true existential crisis until the end of World War II. The war ended with Europe as no longer a serious empirical power to be reckoned with. It was economically, structurally, and socially defeated and destroyed. People were surrounded by death and true decay (not the decadent variety of a wealthy class that endlessly exploits the peasants for meaningless objectivist reasons). People had to face the choices they made in a truly horrible war where the value of life and integrity had been completely destroyed--especially from the Victorean Ideals that ruled the culture before hand.

Therefore existentialism had truly come of age in Europe at this time. It was then that you had large numbers of youth struggling with their own nihilism---existentialists hanging out in cafe's, all dressed in black, and listening to jazz music. Eventually it gave way to structuralism and other philosophies--mankind wasn't ready to embrace the subjective individual. And why should he? Science, at that time, still held promise to solve all of man's problems. So the value of the individual gave way to the value of structuralist relationships--where an existent existed, not of itself, but of the relation it had to other objects.

Our credit crisis was certainly not as serious as World War II in terms of destruction. I don't think it left countless, otherwise upstanding moral, women prostituting themselves just to survive, get sustenance, or to hopefully save a loved one. Our infrastructure may be crumbling, but this is because it is aged, not because of destruction. And we are certainly not faced with the realization of which side of the problem of mass genocide did we as individuals fall on. But the credit crisis brought home some significant cultural realities that World War II did for Europe.

A credit crisis is not a recessionary event--it is the start of a depression. (Few Americans realize how lucky we are that we did not fall into depression, and exactly what the Federal Reserve and Obama actually did.) But to consider the real impact of the Credit Crisis, we have to look at it from a Nietzschean perspective. If we go back to the 1980's and 1990's, as the economy prospered, and the American dream of doing something big and making it rich, seemed to become a reality----it was just a matter of positioning yourself, taking chances, and believing it would happen. In this way America was very Dionysian---our growth, and the market we could exploit, seemed infinite. This idea was challenged by the crash of the Dot.com market, and it was then that people, especially those in power, began to realize that our growth is limited---and it was at this point that we began to see the rise of the Apollonian dynamic---a dynamic not of nature, and explosive unbridled growth, but of control, management, and repressive growth, if not retardation. The growth following the collapse of the dot.com market was not legitimate---it was a debt-induced illusion built upon lies and exploitation. But clearly the Apollonian dynamic gains its most power when a culture faces its own limits, and even worst---its own decay and collapse.

The Credit Crisis was the final straw. Whatever doubts the dot.com collapse left us with, the Credit Crisis brought out into blatant black and white lucidity. Everyone, from the bottom to the top saw and experienced America's limits. We now live in a very Apollonian culture where micro-management and objectivism rule the day. People are nothing more than objects---which should be squeezed as if to get blood from a turnip (as the saying goes). This is our existential crisis----it is the time when the American individual needs to struggle free to seek his/her own existential freedom. (And this is at a time when American culture dominates Modern Global Culture. (The answer to survival involves a revolutionary return to the Dionysian----just as we had in the 1960's.)

The Adjustment Bureau, by the ways, is a movie about struggling towards one's existential freedom. The Adjustment Bureau itself, is a metaphor for Kierkegaard's 'Crowd.'

 

A rather loose definition, by that definition you could call any movie with a protagonist an existentialist movie

The lego movie?, seriously

 

Aren't the Matrix movies one such example?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX3qLIwHoUo

 

No, only movies that are existentialist in nature. But as I said, it is an especially common theme now---because it is coming of age in America today---just as the powers of Apollonian objectivism gains more and more control to subdue the human spirit.

I stand by my comment----though it has been a while since I watched the movie with my grandson, so I will not remember all the existential aspects of it.

But to begin with, there is the song that is played throughout the movie---Everything is Awesome---and it is awesome because you are part of a team, in other words, the song celebrates how everyone and everything is the same.

The song reflects the Lego culture, which reflects the one-dimensional nature of modern culture. Everything is great as long as the faceless blocks fit in and follow their instruction or rule booklets (whatever it was) as a good citizen. It is a culture that is all about fitting into the collective whole rather than standing out by oneself.

But then you have the hero----a stereotypical nobody-----who is afraid of his existential freedom, but unlike everyone else, he is more aware of that fear and trembling (as Kierkegaard would call it)---that possibility of standing out and taking control over his own life as an individuated individual. When life gave him the chance he, reluctantly at first, grabs hold of that freedom and exercises it. If I recall correctly, despite his reluctance, he still has a will to power that keeps driving him.

In true existentialist nature---the movie is anti-essentialist. Most of the movie takes place in a setting that is based on a basic assumption of essentialism--just like our own world. The hero is made up of the lego blocks of a common everyday construction worker. He is a nobody, with the face and body of just about every other lego construction worker, not to mention, lego person. It is composed of the same building blocks that make up his entire material world. His essence, if existence came to be out of essence, would determine that he could never be a hero. Instead, he is a hero numerous times. But even then, he does heroic acts, not as a hero is supposed to do (i.e. not as someone whose essence is that of a hero would do), instead he does them in an entirely subjective manner---that of he, himself.

Then there is the theological aspect of the movie—consider that the all powerful being turns out to be nothing more than just a human kid, or his obsessive, imperfectly human father. At this point the whole problem returns us back to free will as it was handled in the Greek tragedies---which makes, what the hero actually accomplished, all that more existentially significant (unlike the Greek Tragedies)---because he is not a Herculean demigod that could rise up to the metaphorical Mt Olympus---he was just a mere nobody, on his way to becoming authentic (in fact I would say that this is yet another example of how our Post-Modern culture is crying for yet a whole new essentialism that allows for existential freedom, but that is a subject for a whole other thread…)

At this point however, we see the movie in truly authentic existential terms—a mythology reflecting the human relationship between a life-loving son, and his overly dominant father. Because, after all, existentialism is, by definition, a purely human experience/understanding. The father represents the Apollonian rationalistic-objectivist side of society, and the son the Dionysian subjective side which is struggling to manifest under the oppressive weight of the Modern Age---just as the son struggles to freely express himself under the control of his father. The father is so objectively blinded by rules and having everything in its proper place that he resorts to super-glue---a metaphor for the rules, and other socializing forces that try to bind us, and the institutions that enforce them. The movie even ends with the invasion of the baby sister, representing the uncontrolled and unforeseen consequences of our own existential freedom.

There were other metaphors and motifs, but it has been a whole year since I saw this movie—those were the main points I recall.

Yes,The Matrix franchise is very much so.

 

I'd love to have a beer with you some time

Interesting stuff, thanks for the map.

 

Well, if you are ever in the Denver Area (I'm in a Northwest suburb) I am often lighting up my firepit where a group of us will sit, cook steaks, and drink beer and talk philosophy, often until the wee hours of the morning.

 

What?...No Ganja? Why that's sacrilegious! If you want to reach that existentialist state.....

 

I'll let ya know

 

Ex-Machina

An engineer develops a robot and he puts out a contest to select a graduate student in computer science to stay at his place and interact with the robot, to see if it can pass the Turing test, a test where a human cannot distinguish AI from authentic human responses. A lot of the film deals with the emotional complexities of being human.


I really like this film, the main existential dilemma raised is 'What does it mean to be human?' The concept has been shown in film such as A.I. as well, but I really like the way Ex-Machina delivers the complexities of the issues, it feels like it Harkens back to The style of Issac Asminov books in it's emphasis on developing concepts, while maintaining a cutting edge futurism, that unlike some other films dealing with ai, seems as if it is on the cusp of being realized.

 

I'm more interested to know what perception you give out for "numerous" amounts of people to ask this very odd question. :unsure:

 

..... Marxist--anti Marxist, anti business--pro business, an answer to the Occupy movement, a satire on American life and politics, dystopic... All of those things speak to the objective vs. subjective nature of the film----i.e. collective/group vs. individual, and are different ways of referring to the same existential problem as it exists, and presents itself, in the Modern Age. Though as a philosophy, Marxism is dead.

The biggest issue may very well be the corporation (playing into that pro-business--anti-business theme), as we do live in a world where the coporation is now legally a person, yet its influence is far greater than any single or small group of people, and where multinationals are now so big and powerful that they no longer have sovereignity (Sony is not a Japanese company any more, for example) and many have long surpassed the question of 'too big to fail' especially because of all the cross-shareholdings of large companies). It is the corporation that expresses most of the Apollonian forces that weigh down on the individual today. The OWS Movement were closer to the truth than they may have realized (and this is coming from someone who had a long career on Wall Street).

As far as all that Conspiracy crap, what can I say. ------well, I do think a lot of it is probably meant to mislead. Being the hippie that I am, I have a hard time understanding why so many wannabe hippies, and so-called anti-establishment types today are so right wing. Though in our day, all we really had was the JFK shooting (and that one was probably right), and no one really believed that Paul McCartney was dead---it was just a fun diversion. But have you noticed how so much of today's conspiracy crap leads you to right wing conclusions???? And far too many people fall for it...

 

Well rjhangover----you might appreciate this----but I carry a sacred pipe. So no ganja for me. In fact I really should not have the beer either----but I push the line a little there. But that doesn't mean others at my firepit don't have it------they are respectful and do it away from the firepit (then they return and are in the proper mood for some deep thought), and of course I don't have the pipe at the firepit either. But I haven't smoked in quite a few years.

Though-----I occaisionally consider putting the pipe away for a few days, and having a toke. Maybe some special occasion.

 

I don't think it is odd at all---this is Nietzsche's Age of Nihilism. It is a philosophy that makes a lot of sense when the individual is being repressed, or simply feels powerless to the collective forces around him. Existentialism speaks directly to the alienation we experience within the Modern Age.

In the hallowed halls of the powers that be over philosophy, the schools have moved on, and it is looked at in the past tense. I think we are ready for a new philosophy that incoporates many elements of existentialism...

 

It's just that. Well unless you aren't telling us something, like you're a movie director... Why are random people coming up to you all like "oh hey, do you know any extensionalism movies?"

Like, who does that??



I've never heard of the term used for a movie category.

 

I was 24/7 for 40 years, but I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia twice. Died the last time, and they brought me back. Turns out they were misdiagnosing me with COPD when I really had pulmonary fibrosis, and the meds they had me on gave me the pneumonia. Bla bla bla....So anyway, I only toke once in a while now. But it's really weird dealing with reality after all these years.