Customer Reviews

Derrida [VHS]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This mockumentary is guaranteed to attract some interest, since Derrida, whatever the audience may know of him, is rather telegenic. Unfortunately, he gets the Ozzie Osbourne treatment here - the philosopher as the slightly uncooperative star of his own reality show, unable to shake the camera crew for long.

You learn how he finds his house key, how he prepares a snack, and how he puts on his coat. You see his wife, some of his friends, tight smiles, trying to stay out of the picture. What you don't get much of is the man doing what made him famous - and even less an exploration of his career. Who or what does he read, talk about, care about, when he is not forced, by the insistent camera, to answer slightly embarrassing questions?

To give him credit, Derrida works hard to contribute something intelligent to the show, as for instance when he reflects on the impoliteness of philosophical biographies. Indeed, this stalker movie makes you wonder what they actually wanted from Derrida. Kirby Dick never got any of the dozens of people he filmed to tell a good Derrida joke, and Amy Kofman's flirtations with the tan and trim thinker will make the audience squirm.

If you want to see Derrida talk about film, watch 'Ghost Dance' or his television interviews with Stiegler. If you want to hear him reflect on his career, watch the French documentary Safaa Fathy made with him. But if you ever wondered what might happen when you put a professor into a kind of reverse witness protection program, as Warhol did with Ondine, then watch this DVD. Beware though: the heavy-handed use of voice-overs may make you sad that the years of footage and access Amy Kofman and got in the end amount to little more than having the fan put the master's words into her own mouth.

Agree with the prior customer views, big time. On Derrida's resistance to the project, he gets no complaint from me. He clearly gave extraordinary access and tried very hard to cooperate, but the crew was so intrusive and inefficient with lights and mikes and the questions so insipid, that he just seemed constantly amazed at what he was being subjected to. Alas, name it Derrida Butters His Toast if you want to do some self-inflated student art project. I learned close to zero about Derrida the thinker, other than he seems to be a nice old French fellow with a long standing marriage and a successful practice in teaching and writing.

Taking on a project with this potential, spending years with this level of intimate access, and calling it Derrida, suggesting breadth of content, but bringing little insight about his thinking to the screen outside of mostly silly gimmicks, is a sad sad thing.

Derrida (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, 2002)

Kirby Dick (Sick, Private Practices) and first-time director Amy Ziering Kofman take a look at, arguably, the most important and influential philosopher of the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida. And perhaps "take on" is the best way to understand the dynamic of this film.

Kofman's intention was to get away from the philosophy, for the most part, and get to the quotidian existence of Derrida's life. Which is all well and good, except that people who go to see a film about Jacques Derrida are going to want the philosophy. But looking at it strictly from the slice-of-life aspect, the film still comes off looking like a student project. (Co-director Kirby Dick, who came in after the start of production, mentions the "naivete" of the footage that had already been shot in interviews. Indeed.)

It probably doesn't help that Derrida keeps throwing monkeywrenches into the works himself. It's not as if he feels uncomfortable with the camera, though his reactions at times may be mistaken for such; it is more that Derrida feels an acute sense of being filmed, which at times makes him reluctant and at times makes him somewhat mischievous. (Kofman is from Los Angeles; during a lecture, for example, Derrida mentions that the last film the class looked at from LA was footage of the Rodney King riots, and goes on to pull the parallel out farther.) The end result being a documentary with no finesse about a subject who is reluctant to be a subject.

One thing of note, though: the wonderful score by Ryuichi Sakamoto (Wild Palms, etc.). It is brilliant, and perhaps does a better job of underscoring things here than does the direction. Lovely.

While a look into the life of Jacques Derrida is a rare and wonderful thing, and needs to be treasured, I wish Dick had been the author here, or a similarly gifted documentarist. What we have could have been-but wasn't. ** ½

I recently attended a showing of "Derrida", a biographical documentary on the French philosopher, Jaques Derrida, who is famous for "deconstructionism". A californian film crew follows Derrida as he gives lectures, answers interviewers' questions and discusses aspects of his life and philosophy. It's not often that we get to see documentaries of famous living philosophers in America, so I was quite enthusiastic about viewing this film.

Derrida observes towards the end of his film that this documentary will have more to say about the film crew than about him, Jacques Derrida, because it will be the film crew to edit the shootings and decide "which Jacques Derrida" is to be presented. If that is indeed the case, then the movie tells us its creators were young, inexperienced, not well-versed in philosophy; they missed a golden opportunity to meaningfully explore the life and philosophy of the last great post-structuralist.

At regular intervals, difficult passages from Derrida's writings flash on the screen, leaving us little time to ponder them. Sound bytes dont work well for Derrida! The interviewers questions are haltingly broad, "What do you have to say on the subject of love?", haltingly personal, "Tell us about how you fell in love with your wife?", or haltingly stupid, "which philosopher would you have liked as a mother?". To his credit, Derrida either refuses to answer such questions, or reformulates them into intelligent ones. At one point Derrida begins to make interesting comments on the myth of "Narcissus" and "Echo", obviously alluding to the relationship between "source" and "simulacra", but the interviwer fails to ask penetrating questions to draw him out on the matter.

After a family lunch, Derrida himself, turning the tables, asks an overly broad question of the interviewer: "What did you think of my family?". "Il sont tres gentils, tres chaleureux" is the response. I wonder if the irony of this was lost on Derrida and the film crew.

We see Derrida eat, get a haircut and meet friends...a warm fuzzy to remind us that Gallic philosophers are, after all, just like us. In short, if Americans suddenly took more interest in the lives of French philosophers than Britney Spears, this film would be on "People" magazine's recommended list. Tant pis.

-Thomas Seay

The producers of this film seemed to be more interested in making a philosophically relevant piece of art than a primer on deconstruction. This was certainly their prerogative, and in some ways, ironically, a more fitting experiential sort of primer; but it seemed to me squandered access to one of our time's most celebrated minds.

20-30% of the movie was shot by a 3rd or 4th camera with the primary camera in the picture blurring lines of story teller and subject and there were protracted segments of Jacques buttering bread or walking down the street that were thick with irony. However, it seemed this film was more about the cleverness of the filmmakers than the thoughts of a powerful mind. There is little discussion of deconstruction and the interviewers get him to talk at length about topics clearly not central to his program. Eventually the ubiquity of the unsteady cam shots and "decentered" (yes, I know, another artistic representation of Derrida's method) visual focus became a distraction. There is some footage from seminars that is outstanding and periodic quotes are helpful and appropriate. On the whole I have to rate this DVD highly because there is nothing like it - but it represents a bit of a missed opportunity - there is no reason 2 weeks of access to this man should not result in 5 stars. 85 minutes of compiled lecture and seminar clips would be a more helpful introduction to Jacques Derrida

Q: So what do you do with a guy who has challenged every philosophic assumption upon which the western thought-world is premised?

A: Film him putting jam on bread.

The filmakers can't decide whether they want to take a reverent look at this legendary philosopher & his unique contribution to western thought or whether they want to deconstruct him. What they decide to do is try to get Derrida to deconstruct himself, but their efforts are so transparent that they usually just put Derrida on the spot & in the awkward position of trying to be gracious to them and their fumbling crew while still defending his privacy.

To be fair to the filmakers, Derrida is the one who gives the filmakers the idea for this strategy when he comments on the tendency of western philosophers since Aristotle not to include details from their personal lives in their work, and, later, when he mentions that he would like to know about the sex lives of Husserl & Heidegger etc...
But, when asked these sorts of questions himself, Derrida refuses to reveal anything, so what we have here is a kind of cat & mouse game where the filmaker/interrogator attempts to trick Derrida into talking about something that he refuses to talk about, himself. To be fair to Derrida, however, one reason for this reluctance to talk about his personal relationships is a respect for the privacy of others, ie his wife & family. It is readily apparent that for Derrida there is a definite separation between what he perceives to be his professional responsibilites to the filmakers and to his public and what he perceives to be his personal responsibilities to his family and himself. But, in true Derridean fashion, the decision whether to speak or not to speak is forever deferred. Whether he speaks of it or not, however, it is apparent that Derrida and his psychoanalyst wife, Marguerite, are extremely close and share a very intimate bond. Even if Derrida is reluctant to discuss his personal life, we do get to observe that personal life firsthand.

So, although the get-Derrida-to-deconstruct-himself strategy doesn't exactly work, the documentary, nonetheless, does allow us unprecedented access to him and it allows us the freedom to take our own measure of the man based upon observation if not upon Derridean self-critique.

As far as autobiography goes, Derrida does talk about his Algerian youth & his expulsion from school for being a Jew, as well as his loathing of having to then go to a school exclusively for Jews. Judging by what Derrida says, it would seem that a certain self-distancing occured at this point in his life, and, although Derrida does not say so in this documentary, it was at this moment in his life that he began his study of western philosophy. This rare moment of openness certainly sheds some light on Derrida's way of theorizing absence/presence, self/other, origin/trace but the filmakers do not capitalize on Derrida's invitation & really miss an opportunity to get him to expound upon the relevance of his personal life to his work. Mostly what we get here is a very gracious Derrida, wife by his side, going about the business of being a lecturer and fielding questions from either the painfully uninformed (one American girl claims that she read one of his "novels" over the summer and wanted to see him in person so that she could better understand what she'd just read) or the boorishly informed (after Derrida gives a lecture in South Africa on the topic of "forgiveness" in which Derrida argues that true forgiveness is not possible because to forgive something is to say that that something is forgivable, one graduate student delivers her own mini-lecture on the topic). Going by the evidence of this documentary, the success of an academic (or at least the success of an academic celebrity) is largely determined by their capacity to suffer fools graciously. To his credit Derrida rarely loses his patience or temper with anyone. If nothing else, we do at least get to see that Jacques Derrida is a decent human being.

I think most viewers will rent this because they already have some knowledge of Derrida's way of thinking and are curious to see the man in action, but these viewers will most likely be disappointed as there are very few philosophical exchanges captured here. Derrida does improvise a bit on Narcissus & Echo, but before he really explores the full implications of the myth (in which he sees an autobiographical resemblance: ie Narcissus can only see himself & Echo cannot say anything original even though the sound of her voice alters the original iteration) he stops short, as if looking in a mirror and then, before the recognition can be registered, looking away. Its not clear whether he is resisting the image or refusing to share it. The (possible) meanings of the scene are easily lost however because the filmakers simply move on to the next scene. Its unclear whether the filmakers don't know what they have or whether they know very well and see no reason to underscore it. I don't think the filmakers can be faulted for this, its just that Derrida is a slippery presence & much more subtle than an obvious entertainer like Slavoj Zizek (who delivers his revelations like a comedian delivering punchlines). Unlike the grand showman Zizek, Derrida is at his most interesting when carefully negotiating the trespasses of thought with the written word. Derrida's preference for the written word over the spoken word is well known and so, not surprisingly, the most intriguing parts of this documentary-essay-portrait are the well-selected quotes from his many works.

I also suspect that we rent DVD's of thinkers like Derrida because we expect something to happen while he is being filmed. And nothing really does happen while he's being filmed, or not enough happens. Its not just that the filmakers lack an understanding of how best to use film & Derrida together, and not just that their questions are not particularly good ones (although both of these contribute to the overall blandness of this portrait), because they do film others asking Derrida questions as well and these questions also fail to get the kind of response that a curious public wants (even though the, often sardonic, answers that are provided will amuse Derrida devotees). For example, to her credit, one enthusiastic American intellectual tries to draw him into a discussion of Seinfeld's ironic universe and how everything on the show from kitchen cabinets to the existence of God is treated with equal gravity. Its a perfect set-up question for a philosopher-celebrity like Slavoj Zizek (the reigning champ of shoot-from-the-hip discourse) and one that Zizk would run with, but Derrida is not someone who cares about celebrity, nor is he someone who is prone to riff on a random topic, nor is he interested in the intersection of pop culture & poststructural philosophy in the way that Zizek is. The question just seems to annoy him. Ultimately, its hard to say whether its the filmakers (and the public's) fault for failing to understand their subject or if Derrida is simply not a very captivating subject (I suspect the problem is with the filmakers).

Though a select few will enjoy the subtleties of nuances of Derrida's attitude & ongoing critique of the proceedings, this is a portrait of a gentleman philosopher that really doesn't have much to recommend itself to a general viewership, other than the fact that it is the only one available on DVD. It should be mentioned that Derrida does have a small 5 minute part in a movie that he co-wrote called Ghost Dance in which he plays himself talking about ghosts--he thinks of himself as one--and cinema. Though its only a brief cameo appearance, Ghost Dance does understand how best to use film & Derrida together.

In one of the excerpts from his works, Derrida is quoted as saying that the self is visible to others but not visible to the self. The question I would have liked to ask at this point is whether he glimpses his self while reading his own work (even though Derrida often says that the self is never at one with itself it would be interesting to know if he recognizes himself in his discursive traits & style). Readers of Derrida's work know him as a textual "presence" or, in Derridean lingo, they know him as an "absence" and he fosters, as well as parodies, this image of himself as a kind of ghostly aura haunting the interstices of various discourses, literary & philosophic, looking for an originary presence (deity, logos, self) where, most likely, there is none to be found (strangely enough, the topic of religion never comes up). Ideally, of course, a philosopher's actual presence is valuable to the extent that the reader can ask questions of the philosopher and engage him in a lively debate as well as correct their own misreadings & misunderstandings (a particularly acute problem with Derrida's writing which has been called "obscure" even by his former teacher & friend Michael Foucault). For this reason it would be an excellent idea to archive the lectures & seminars (along with the papers) of great academics like Derrida. I'm sure that this will begin happening very soon. Imagine what it would be like to watch Derrida deliver one of his famous papers like 1966's "Structure, Sign, Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences" or to watch him engage in one of his many heated exchanges with fellow academics. But this isn't what is captured here. After watching this DVD, my impression is that the best of Derrida is in print, and Derrida seems to think this as well. His advice to the woman who attempts to parse post-structuralism with Seinfeld or vice versa is to stop watching sit-coms and pick up a book. I am guessing that, were he still alive, his advice to potential viewers of this DVD would be to put down the DVD and pick up a book.

Not an ideal portrait, but a few interesting moments will make it worthwhile for the attentive reader.

Sure, this DVD is not Derrida speaking all the time about his major works, but there is a reason for that. It would be quite impossible to go over all of Derrida's work in a 80 minute film, however, all these conversations that Derrida has with the film makers, give a very important and interesting glimpse at how the man thinks about all things, his work often included. If you want a full blow out 'Derrida, ONLY works", then read his books, this movie is part biography and part thought, plus the bonus material is quite good. Overall a very good film.

The documentary was interesting because it is a side of Derrida not present in his works. But, throughout the documentary, I could not help but think that Derrida was merely playing with Kirby and Kirby just didn't get it. From the unanswered questions, the comments and the face impressions, I just thought that Derrida was incredibly bored and yet amused at Kirby. Also, the questions asked by Kirby were too...high school? And too broad.

Kirby tries to turn the tables on Derrida and "deconstruct him" by showing each of the facets of a man and that he is a man, just like the rest of us. But, the only thing this documentary accomplishes is to show a film crew following Derrida around, trying to make sense of him, and failing miserably.

I really enjoyed this one. It would be especially good to see right after reading Derrida's own Archive Fever, which this film draws from both by quoting some of its passages, and by "deconstructing" the filmmakers' own efforts to get at who and (or perhaps versus) what Derrida is. I agree with a reviewer for The Guardian, who wrote that the filmmakers "produce an enthralling, playful film that constantly frustrates our desire to know the 'truth' about this man, while deconstructing the very format of the biography in a manner that Derrida would doubtless give his blessing to." And on the DVD's extra features, he does just that, at a New York opening of the film.

Those looking for penetrating and critical analysis of Derrida's work and ideas should go elsewhere. As Derrida basically says at one point in the film, such people should "do their homework" and go READ. The music works very well, and many of the ragged, unedited edges purposely left in the film extract a playfulness from Derrida, and from his philosophical methodology itself. So in that sense it's about Derrida and his ideas, but it's also about how biographical efforts themselves (which we all make when we "get to know" anyone in our lives) are fraught with illusions and impossibilities.

My favorite parts were about love; the filmmakers ask him to say something about it, and he says he can't, but then he does, nicely deconstructing the question, of course, separating "who" we think love from "what" we love them for. Sure, the film is a hagiographic portrait, but ultimately, I think we're being asked a good question: what do those who revere Derrida love him for? Shouldn't they separate the two? but if they do, how well can they do so?

Good companion film: Notebook on Cities and Clothes.

This film had a couple of moments which held interest, but for the most part I found it extremely superficial and well, narcissistic on the part of the film makers. I am not by any means an expert on Derrida, and was looking forward to learning a bit more about him and his philosophy. I came away from it feeling as if the filmmakers finished this thing congratulating themselves on making a film about an important philosopher, but not having actually bothered to investigate much about what he has written and said. Say what you might about Derrida, he seems to have a curious and thoroughly investigative spirit, which is more than you can say for the boorish creaters of this movie. I was disappointed.