Under the Magnifying Glass

Now that we've finished watching the documentary on Derrida (French philosopher and deconstructionist), I'll just make a few observations regarding the film's use of images....

I think that there are two primary images used by the filmmakers in telling this story about Derrida: Derrida, the celebrated philosopher and Derrida, the man. Throughout the film, we cut back and forth between scenes like Derrida being greeted by admirers--and then his wife kissing him goodbye before leaving for work. This juxtaposition creates a visual contrast between his celebrity status and his ordinary life, which leads us to wonder about the nature of this celebrity status--and this is probably what Derrida would have hoped.

He himself makes it clear that an exalted view of the philosopher places emphasis in the wrong place. When asked what he wished would be included if someone were able to make a similar documentary on Socrates, for instance, Derrida states that he would want to know more about the philosopher's personal life and what was important to him (I suppose that's a pretty liberal paraphrase, but the general idea, I think!).

The often off-center, partially obstructed shots throughout this documentary serve to further emphasize the humanity of the documentary's subject. There is no slick, seamless editing; no pretense of perfection. The viewer is constantly reminded that we are watching staged scenes, as Derrida reminds us himself.

These juxtaposed images of the celebrity and the ordinary man do not seem to be in conflict, however, as Derrida manages to carry both with simplicity and refuses to let artificial constraints be forced upon him.

At one point in the documentary, Derrida also comments on the significance of a person's gaze--their eyes--and also of the human hand. I noticed that throughout the film, frequent close-ups of both Derrida's eyes and hands were included, perhaps in recognition of what he thought you could learn about a person in this way.

This sleuth gives Derrida (the movie) two thumbs up, for not only giving us a sense of the life, thought, and personality of Derrida, but also for demonstrating through the film itself, some of the key concepts of his thought.