I was looking back over Daniel Frampton’s filmosophy article and Heidegger’s ‘philosophy’ on thinking reminded me of ‘Spring, Summer.’
“…we are thinking less and less, mainly because the absorption of information and technology denies us a place for thinking.” 190
Heidegger makes this distinction between ‘calculative’ and ‘meditative’ thinking. Meditative thinking is thus characterized by calmness and contemplation. I couldn’t help making the link between this type of thinking and the focus on meditation, spirituality and Buddhism in ‘Spring, Summer.’ The lake in the film allows a place and time for thinking that escapes technology, (but does it really?) as does Buddhism as a religion.
Filmosophy is the study of film as thinking, yet in using the ‘image’ to contemplate philosophy, technology can hardly be ignored but is embraced through the act of making a film. Meditative thinking is thus needed to contemplate technology and to make use of technology as an articulating force.
“Fluid film-thinking can be seen as such a usage, fluidly merging technology and life, adding one to the other rather than opposing them.” 191
‘Spring, Summer’ along with other films that embrace this contemplative film-thinking, (the article mentions David Fincher, the Wachowski brothers, David Lynch and David Cronenberg) reconcile the opposites of technology and life/philosophy/thinking.
In another cinema subject I’m taking at the moment, Film Noir: Style & History, we learnt about the Moebius Strip as a way of conceptualising the characters in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (great article on Lynch, Lacan and the Moebius Strip here). I thought this could also be useful in understanding this technology/philosophy relationship. The Moebius Strip enables us to view oppositions that would normally be seen as completely distinct as continuous with each other.
“At one point the two sides can be clearly distinguished, but when you traverse the strip as a whole, the two sides are experienced as being continuous.” 7
So, technology can be understood as denying a place for thinking but at the same time enhancing our ability to think through images. I find this a really useful way of conceptualising and articulating binary oppositions like this one.
Also, thinking through images is perhaps a more universal way of conceptualising philosophical issues. In an interview, Kim Ki-Duk talks about why he chooses to use little dialogues in his films:
Question (Me) The scripts have very little dialogue, you don’t need subtitles, is something that will continue to use, a total visual language?
KKD: This is something I’ve been contemplating for a long time, I’ve been battling with myself about dialogue part – because when you have a lot of dialogue and you have to translate from Korean to other languages, you lose a lot of nuances in the translation, and I have spent months and years trying to figure out how I can make my films with as little dialogue as possible. I think I will continue to work with little dialogue because I worry that I wont be able to convey what I want in other languages. I believe that actions have a lot more truth than words.
I think that minimal dialogue is perhaps a crucial part of meditative film-thinking and perhaps also a characteristic of certain Asian cinema (i’m thinking of Wong Ka Wai.)
