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Full-Text Articles in Other Philosophy
Scorsese’S Silence: Film As Practical Theodicy, Ian Deweese-Boyd
Scorsese’S Silence: Film As Practical Theodicy, Ian Deweese-Boyd
Journal of Religion & Film
Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence takes up the anguished experience of God’s silence in the face of human suffering. The main character, the Jesuit priest Sabastião Rodrigues, finds his faith gutted by the appalling silence of God as he witnesses the horrific persecution of Christians in seventeenth century Japan. Yujin Nagasawa calls the particularly intense combination of the problems of divine hiddenness and evil the problem of divine absence that resists resolution through explanations that have typically characterized the theodicies offered by philosophers. Drawing on the thought of Ignatius of Loyola, this essay explores the way …
“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan
“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan
Journal of Religion & Film
This article analyzes the portrayal of death in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful. My claim is that the experience of death, in the film, functions as a tool both for the elderly main character’s increased self-understanding and for her conscious, ethical action. I enter this discussion through an examination of late deconstruction’s ethical turn and the argument that aporetic unknowing, if experienced and endured, leads to the chance for real, authentic action. I then demonstrate how the film depicts such an aporetic encounter with death, and do so, in large part, by focusing on the film’s final …
Climbing A Ladder To Heaven. Gnostic Vision Of The World In Jacob's Ladder (1990), Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Climbing A Ladder To Heaven. Gnostic Vision Of The World In Jacob's Ladder (1990), Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Journal of Religion & Film
Contemporary film-makers quite willingly employ motifs typical of various gnostic trends. The author shows that ancient gnosticism is a treasury of motifs and a source of aesthetical and narrative strategies present in contemporary cinema. The article treats Jacob’s Ladder (1990, dir. Adrian Lyne) which is analyzed through Gnostic beliefs. In the author’s opinion, this film can be treated as a model where the gnostic thought has been presented in a coherent and systematic manner.