舞臺(tái)背景和道具很簡約的爆笑情景話劇，但是看似又沒有舞臺(tái)，真人版拼接的人物情景模擬效果加上精選的臺(tái)詞，喜劇效果十分濃厚，當(dāng)然要在對維特根斯坦的故事有一定的背景知識的情況下才能感受到。此片導(dǎo)演把艱深的話題輕松簡約而又相對通俗的在展現(xiàn)在觀眾面前，對于舞臺(tái)虛擬消失化的處理，以及簡單道具的應(yīng)用很到位，真是一次偉大的創(chuàng)作?？磥砬f重貴族紳士的英國人有著一流的講故事的能力，而這樣的優(yōu)點(diǎn)也體現(xiàn)在今天的BBC的紀(jì)錄片里面。

里面有個(gè)十分可愛且?guī)洑獾男≌缪莸耐臧娴木S特根斯坦，會(huì)時(shí)不時(shí)的以“畫外音”的方式出現(xiàn)在故事的敘述過程中，有詼諧且點(diǎn)醒我們的效果。

維特根斯坦，在這個(gè)嚴(yán)肅的世界里，和謝耳朵一樣可愛，但比謝耳朵更偏執(zhí)卻十足理性更具有真實(shí)感，當(dāng)然很重要的原因是因?yàn)榍罢呔褪钦鎸?shí)存在過的人吧。一個(gè)在思想上歇斯底里的凡人，一個(gè)竭力證明自己的存在的人，證明自己為何存在的人？而這個(gè)問題，是大部分人通過涌入人流的方式而終生不作考慮。直到將要逝去，他才對這個(gè)問題真正感到釋然，我們之外沒有疑惑，安心去吧。

只有天才才能容得下天才，傻子從來是看不起天才或者只知道膜拜天才。

我很少看把電影看第二遍……但這部傳記片實(shí)在是太有趣了。

對于大眾來說為什么牛逼：
成本低，概念高。演員也都選得好
而導(dǎo)演Jarman也是很下功夫。當(dāng)時(shí)幾近失明的他，把維老他的人和他的思想都讀透了。改寫劇本時(shí)Jarman大膽想象，寫成了這么一部輕松詼諧加自我調(diào)侃的同志哲人傳記片。我就喜歡這種先鋒的自我解讀，而不是循規(guī)蹈矩走傳統(tǒng)傳記路線。


對于我個(gè)人來說為什么牛逼：
感情呈現(xiàn)的起乘轉(zhuǎn)折的節(jié)奏把握得特別好。不乏感人的臺(tái)詞，尤其是結(jié)尾凱恩斯的那段獨(dú)白比喻，聽得心都融化了。
我和片中偏執(zhí)地尋找『私人語言』維老有同感。時(shí)常在個(gè)人的孤獨(dú)感中糾結(jié)與人交流時(shí)所遇到的困難。
他認(rèn)為 解決這種孤獨(dú) 尤其是哲人的孤獨(dú)（brooding over its private experience） 的方式就是尋找公共語言
而完善這種語言的方式就是讓所有人的邏輯體系都是理性的、一致的。
當(dāng)有人對他做侮辱手勢的時(shí)候，他開始意識到，人類的語言不可能完美。
他執(zhí)著而天真 聰明而鉆牛角尖 不愛都不行。

好吧其實(shí)是為了貼作業(yè)的，調(diào)研賈曼的兩部電影
中心論點(diǎn)在第一段。。關(guān)于電影中的同志題材和場景設(shè)置

Derek Jarman’s Personal Narrative—Exploring Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michelangelo Caravaggio’s Brilliance and Queer Identities


As one of the best-known British queer directors, Derek Jarman produced several unique biopics of talented men tortured by their repressed homosexuality. Notably, Jarman started his career in feature film by working with Ken Russell, a director who reinvented the artist biopic by “introducing startling fantasy sequences and ostentatious camera movements.” Jarman continued Russell’s revolt against conventional realist representation of historical figures. Also using biopics as a form of documentation, Jarman has sought to reenact experience and thereby reconstruct affective relations. He identifies with brilliant queer men who are often too radical for their times. By portraying queer figures, Jarman interprets art and philosophy as well as repressed emotions and loneliness of queer men. Even during the conservative periods, Jarman’s nuanced films carried many provocative themes that were not only political but also highly personal. Caravaggio (1986) and Wittgenstein (1993) exemplify these aspects of Jarman’s individualistic, subjective approach. Jarman admits to strongly identifying with Wittgenstein: “I have much of Ludwig in me. Not in my work, but in my life.” Jarman has also stated in interviews that his artistic dilemmas are similar to those experienced by Caravaggio. This research paper attempts to capture the richness of Jarman's personal relationship with these two figures by discussing both films’ use of mise-en-scene and their thematic concern with queer identity.
Jarman engages with the lives of Wittgenstein and Caravaggio by referencing and paying homage to their work on a theoretical level. A painter and former set designer, Jarman emphasizes the use of mise-en-scene as substitute for literal narrative. In Jarman's films, staging and visual imagery are the most important qualities, while “narrative takes second place". While the lack of emphasis on logical narrative granted him more space to experiment, viewers with little knowledge of the characters are often confused. Jarman concentrates on constructing the plot around Caravaggio's paintings rather than his life and times. Critics have pointed out the absence of a clear narrative in Caravaggio. The characters and their relations to Caravaggio are unclear and sometimes misleading. Many supporting characters do not have presence in the plot that was fully distinct from their respective paintings. Yet Jarman believed he had to establish a unique perspective in order to capture Caravaggio’s dramatic “Hollywood template” life in a 90-minute film without resorting to clichés. Narrative ambiguity allows Jarman to “recreate many details of [his] life and, bridging the gap of centuries and cultures, to exchange a camera with a brush.” He interweaves the paintings with the plot with a painstakingly reworked script that involved 16 rewrites, as well as magnificent tableaux vivant production sets. Jarman focuses on Caravaggio’s emotions, sexuality, dreams and events surrounding the creation of his paintings, redefining the genre of the artist biopic. The paintings drive the narrative, and the consciousness depicted is not that of independently conceived characters but that of the artist himself, Jarman-Caravaggio.
As a lifelong painter, Jarman appreciates the narrative power of mise-en-scene and highlights it in the set designs for both films. Jarman is fascinated by Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro to create the illusion of depth. He praised Caravaggio for inventing cinematic light and the noir style shadowed backgrounds. Jarman pays homage to this technique through tightly controlled lighting effects. The tone and shade of the walls and skin color convey more about the scene than the script. In most scenes, Jarman meticulously replicates Caravaggio’s light sources, which usually come from the left and therefore elicits stronger responses from the viewers. Jarman attempts to show that the chiaroscuro is effective to capture intense emotions not only on canvas but also in film. He pays homage to Caravaggio by employing light and emphasizes the timelessness of classic art techniques.
While Jarman painted cinema like the artist Caravaggio, he also philosophized it, as expressed in the mise-en-scene of Wittgenstein. Jarman portrays Wittgenstein’s general estrangement from a painfully foreign world as a result of both his abstract philosophy and his difficulties accepting his sexuality. Jarman shows a world that appears absurd from Wittgenstein’s perspective: the highly stylized acting and flamboyant costumes of other characters contrast with Wittgenstein’s naturalistic acting and gray tweed jacket. Wittgenstein questions himself throughout the film: “How can I be a logician before I am a human being? The most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!” He travels across Europe, fighting in the Great War, teaching in a rural school, and escaping to Ireland or Norway to familiarize himself with the strange world, yet its meaning is still “problematic.” Wittgenstein, troubled by his sexuality, also wished to live an ethical life guided by strict logic. Yet this longing for perfection is disrupted by the messiness of life and the fickleness of passions.
Jarman places symbolic visuals in the biopic, which remind sophisticated audiences of “Wittgenstein’s epigrammatic style” of writing. Lady Ottoline paints Bertrand Russell on canvas as a red monochrome. When he wrote the script, Jarman also tried to understand Wittgenstein’s personal life by reading his books. Remarks on Colour provided him with cinematic context to relate to Wittgenstein’s ideas: “Remarks on Colour was a path for me back to the Tractatus [Logico-Philosophicus].” Furthermore, Jarman’s schematic use of color contrasts between the repression of private feelings and the expression of straightforward colors. "The black annihilates the decorative and concentrates so my characters shine in it like red dwarfs—and green giants. Yellow lines and blue stars”, Jarman references the schematic use of colors in Wittgenstein poetically. Jarman later wrote an entire book—Chroma— to show how colors are solely products of human interaction. In Wittgenstein’s words: “I think that it is worthless and of no use whatsoever for the understanding of painting to speak of the characteristics of the individual colours.” Through referencing Wittgenstein’s ideas on colors in the mise-en-scene as well as script text, Jarman pays homage to the philosopher. Jarman also successfully uses film medium to explore abstract theories and overcomes limitations of language.
Jarman engages with Wittgenstein and Caravaggio not only on a theoretical level but also reads into their personal struggles with homosexuality. Similar to abstract theories, Jarman’s Wittgenstein believed that homosexuality is an area that restricts language as a mode of expression. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” Wittgenstein once wrote. In Jarman’s dialogue and cinematography, Wittgenstein's struggles to come to terms with his own philosophical ideas were inseparable from his attitude towards his sexuality. In one scene, three cyclists dressed in anachronistic jumpsuits abuse him with homophobic slurs and the insulting V-sign. Wittgenstein is flabbergasted and realizes there is no “l(fā)ogical structure” in the V-sign – the main argument of his first book. He plans to commit suicide but then rethinks his entire philosophy of language, completing his magnum opus Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein is confused by the logic of a curse, but Jarman sets the scene to suggest that Wittgenstein is confounded by homophobia. Jarman explains that Wittgenstein found a black hole in the logic, “for [the picture of Queer] there was no language.” Later, Bertrand Russell is infuriated after Wittgenstein convinces his student Johnny to work and drives him away from philosophy. Russell criticizes Wittgenstein for idealizing the common folk and “infecting too many young men” with his thought experiments. Jarman hints at Wittgenstein’s homosexual relationships with students through these double entendres. Wittgenstein's euphemisms, too, reflect his embarrassment concerning these relationships: He has “known” Johnny three times. Following this scene, Jarman places the mentally tormented Wittgenstein in a suspended cage. Wittgenstein ponders upon his relationships with his university and exclaims painfully: “Philosophy is the sickness of the mind. I mustn’t infect too many young men… living in a world where such a love is illegal and trying to live openly and honestly is a complete contradiction.” John Maynard Keynes, also clearly homosexual in the film, consoles Wittgenstein: “If you’d just allow yourself to be a little more sinful, you’d stand a chance of salvation.” Both Wittgenstein’s sexuality and philosophy alienates him from the real world. Jarman portrays a Wittgenstein who finds it difficult to distinguish between his philosophy and sexual passions.
Similarly, Jarman regards Caravaggio as the most homosexual of painters, based on his paintings rather than his biography. Jarman notes that Caravaggio paints his own face staring from the back of the crowd in The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. He hypothesizes that “[Caravaggio] gazes wistfully at the hero slaying the saint. It is a look no one can understand unless he has stood till 5 a.m. in a gay bar hoping to be fucked by that hero. The gaze of the passive homosexual at the object of his desire, he waits to be chosen, he cannot make the choice”. Jarman reads Caravaggio's paintings for insights into his psychology and romantic relationships, and places these readings into his film. Caravaggio suffers creative drought while painting The Martyrdom. He encounters the attractive, masculine yet poor Ranuccio and selects him as a model. Ranuccio, the object of desire, inspires Caravaggio to finish the painting. Caravaggio showers him with gold coins in a suggestive fashion and also delivers one of the coins mouth to mouth. At the final stage, Caravaggio gazes intensely at Ranuccio still posed as the Martyr, forming a tableau vivant of the painting. His role as the artist desiring for Caravaggio and man yearning for St. Matthew in the painting is blurred. Caravaggio says in a voiceover, “I will seek him, whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not.” Jarman depicts Caravaggio as having romantic yet passive sentiments for the undesirable and shows this through ingenious mise-en-scene.
Elsewhere, Jarman portrays Caravaggio’s passivity as a product of the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic establishment’s homophobia. He reads in the same painting “pernicious self-hatred [homosexuals] fostered among themselves… which is the key to Caravaggio’s life and destruction—it’s written all over the painting.” Jarman also identifies many of Caravaggio’s paintings as claustrophobic. Believing that there is a connection between Caravaggio’s style and his state of mind, Jarman films all of the scenes in studio with claustrophobic environments to suggest Caravaggio’s suffocation in a homophobic society. There is only one exterior scene in Caravaggio, in which Ranuccio and Lena are engaging in heterosexual foreplay. The restriction of space is emphasized as Caravaggio recounts the open spaces of the ocean or grasslands on his deathbed, yet the film includes not a single shot of the sky.
In Wittgenstein, Jarman further restricts the mise-en-scene space and uses nothing but a black background. Yet Wittgenstein does not experience the engulfing black as simply a form of claustrophobia. By using the black drape, Jarman was not only able to film the documentary on a minimal budget, but could also suggest that “the historicising attitude to biopic is totally irrelevant.” Jarman, who sought to make a philosophical film, said that “to redefine film, like language, needs a leap—in this case, the black drapes [defy] the narrative without junking it”. Time, space, and color are happening, juxtaposing an eternal and persistent void. Wittgenstein’s biographer Ray Monk lauded this approach in a review, saying that the black background embodies Wittgenstein’s “ahistorical, existential style of philosophizing and creates the entirely apposite impression that this is a story that is happening, not in any particular place, but rather in somebody’s—Wittgenstein’s—mind.” Eventually, on his deathbed, as Wittgenstein accepts his queer desires in an imperfect world, the child version of him rises out of the black drapes and flies up to the sky (a backdrop) on aeronautic wings. Wittgenstein leaves the alienating world that has been portrayed thus far in the film.
Jarmanesque props are also an important mise-en-scene element. Jarman references Leonardo da Vinci’s engineering drawings by giving Wittgenstein kite wings and having him hold lawn sprinklers in his hands. The sprinklers' jets of water resemble the spinning propellers of a plane. Jarman’s anachronistic choice of props was inspired by the props in Caravaggio’s paintings. In Penitent Magdelane, only the pearls and bottle of perfume indicate that the subject is Mary Magdalene. Her identity is otherwise unclear because the model is a prostitute dressed in 16th century clothing. Caravaggio’s mix of historical and contemporary objects suggests a connection between the historical subject and the viewer. Like the props in Caravaggio’s paintings, those in Jarman’s films suggest that history exists within the present and is embodied by contemporary models and objects. In one scene of Caravaggio, the aristocratic banker pompously fiddles with an electronic calculator that shows the timeless relationship between art and commerce. The vicious art critic attacks Caravaggio’s paintings and sexuality using a typewriter, perhaps referring to contemporary Tories that attacked Jarman personally in Sunday Times. The pope jeers at Caravaggio with a modern term “you little bugger” when he claims that art only helps the status quo. Through anachronistic props, Jarman shows the timelessness of artists’ tension with the establishment.
Jarman engages with Caravaggio and Wittgenstein’s theoretical ideas as well as personal dilemmas to show that they are not only brilliant but also troubled by their queer sexuality. Equipped with mise-en-scene elements such as lighting techniques, schematic colors and anachronistic props incorporated in his meticulously written script, Jarman directed nuanced films such as Wittegenstein and Caravaggio that explore many provocative themes during conservative eras. As an artist, Jarman feels responsible to show those details and nuances that cannot yet be fitted into a theoretically coherent framework, where the “attrition between private and public worlds” is felt strongest. Jarman used cinema “to express his beliefs, his dreams, his emotions, his ideologies, his needs. That is the difference between the artist and the technician who both make films.” Combining extraordinary vision, intellect and effort, he effectively conveyed his personal and theoretical readings of the two figures’ queer identities in Caravaggio and Wittgenstein.
 


Bibliography
Beristain, Gabriel. Caravaggio (DVD audio commentary). Dir. Derek Jarman. Cinevista, 1986. DVD. Zeitgeist Films. 2008.
Clark, James. "Jarman's Wittgenstein." Jim's Reviews. http://jclarkmedia.com/jarman/jarman10.html (accessed December 5, 2010).
Ellis, Jim. Derek Jarman's Angelic Conversations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Fox, Sharon. A perceptual basis for the lighting of Caravaggio's faces. Journal of Vision. August 1, 2004 vol. 4 no. 8 article 215. <http://www.journalofvision.org/content/4/8/215.abstract>
Jarman, Derek. Caravaggio. Thames and Hudson, London, 1986. 44.
Jarman, Derek. Dancing Ledge. Quartet Books, London, 1984.
Jarman, Derek. "This is Not a Film of Ludwig Wittgenstein." In Wittgenstein: the Terry Eagleton script, the Derek Jarman film. London: British Film Institute, 1993. 63-67.
Jarman, Derek, and Roger Wollen. Derek Jarman: a portrait. London: Thames And Hudson, 1996.
Monk, Ray. ‘Between Earth and Ice: Derek Jarman’s Film of the life of Wittgenstein’. In The Times Literary Supplement, 19 March 1993.
Nash, Mark. 'Innocence and of Experience,' Afterimage 12, Autumn 1985. 30.
Pencak, William. “Caravaggio and the Italian Renaissance” and “Wittgenstein: The Grey Flame and the Early Twentieth Century.” In The films of Derek Jarman. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2002. 70-84, 108-119.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Colour. Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.
Wymer, Rowland. Derek Jarman. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.
 
Appendix
Appendix 1: Michelangelo Caravaggio’s The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.
 
Appendix 2: Wittgenstein, the da Vinci design, and sprinklers. Wittgenstein

Appendix 3: Caravaggio’s Penitent Magdelane

豆瓣Appendix 4：寫著兩部片兒的起因

最近又有新的電影paper要寫 8-10p 隨便什么topic都行
我苦思冥想數(shù)日 從伍迪艾倫到wes anderson，從青年文化想到記者類電影，都因?yàn)楦鞣N原因被我自己一一否決。（太平庸 太日常 被說爛了 我已經(jīng)知道太多有偏見的，etc）（選research電影難度在于，又要喜歡研究對象，又不能太喜歡——否則你沒辦法置身于高處去評判??！比如wes anderson……）

昨天隨意瀏覽豆瓣電影的時(shí)候看到以前打5星的《維特根斯坦因》 正好里面很多我沒理解的概念 同時(shí)覺得很牛逼 于是come up with the rough thesis：When Jarman narrates Ludwig Wittgenstein's life in the film, how does is the director incorporating the philosopher’s ideas on language?

隨后讓季先生幫我借了N本關(guān)于維叔叔和他理論的書……爽～～


今天去找老師的時(shí)候 他聽到我選擇這部電影時(shí)就笑出來了
“我為什么笑啊，其實(shí)我應(yīng)該為你高興才對嘛，只不過我是太久以前看的了（剛出的時(shí)候老師就看了……），所以覺得又驚又喜！”持續(xù)表達(dá)自己的驚訝，“What a surprising choice！You have an interest in philosophy？” 他沒想到我對哲學(xué)還有興趣

我解釋了一番thesis，老師又問我為什么想處這個(gè)的 我說 因?yàn)橐恢庇X得哲人的思想與他們的真實(shí)生活之間的聯(lián)系很微妙。老師質(zhì)問，什么是‘真實(shí)’？我說，想法與生活態(tài)度畢竟還是兩回事。 他說，嗯確實(shí)，隨即開始自言自語“電影能體現(xiàn)出image's immediacy”什么的，我也順手記下來了

建議：1 don't try to become a master on wittgenstein's ideas. 很多人花一輩子都沒整明白
2 focus on the text itself, don't be too absorbed with w's thoughts
說不定要拿這個(gè)作為主體，與《藍(lán)》、《Jubilee》的風(fēng)格做一些聯(lián)系（“Jubilee is a very accessible film。你對朋克文化感興趣嗎？里面有所涉及”“嗯，有的”）（我居然說得這么淡定）
他也非常喜歡Jarman，把他與queer vision聯(lián)系起來，因?yàn)橥詰倌袑?dǎo)們其實(shí)都一種獨(dú)特的表達(dá)方式，雖然往往與同性戀這個(gè)主題不是很相關(guān)

“You are such an unusual student！在我看來，你對抽象的想法這么感興趣，你以后應(yīng)該很喜歡電影理論的?？上О　悴辉谖蚁聦W(xué)期的queer vision課上～我們要討論帕索里尼啊～以及他對天主教的各種奇怪見解”
“帕索里尼，是拍索多瑪?shù)膶Π?？?
“對”
“嗯。。確實(shí)會(huì)很有意思呢。話說你看戲劇作品《馬拉/薩德》了嗎？”
“沒有！我本應(yīng)該去看的！悔恨??！我消息太閉塞了；以后一定要找到獲取這些信息的渠道！”
 

總之跟電影老師每次談話都很歡樂很活躍～～雖然我們兩個(gè)人都有點(diǎn)shy～

Considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein played a central, if controversial, role in 20th-century analytic philosophy. He continues to influence current philosophical thought in topics as diverse as logic and language, perception and intention, ethics and religion, aesthetics and culture. Originally, there were two commonly recognized stages of Wittgenstein's thought—the early and the later—both of which were taken to be pivotal in their respective periods. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the third Wittgenstein. Still, it is commonly acknowledged that the early Wittgenstein is epitomized in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By showing the application of modern logic to metaphysics, via language, he provided new insights into the relations between world, thought and language and thereby into the nature of philosophy. It is the later Wittgenstein, mostly recognized in the Philosophical Investigations, who took the more revolutionary step in critiquing all of traditional philosophy including its climax in his own early work. The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems.