Customer Reviews

Filmosophy

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Despite the silly neologisms (such as "filmind" for film-mind, and, of course, "filmosophy") there is some solid material here on the long-standing interest, in film theory, in the relation between cinema and mind. In what way does a film "think" the things it shows us, and how is this thinking like and unlike human thinking? The strongest passages in the book evolve Frampton's explication of arguments on this subject by Münsterberg, Eisenstein and Deleuze. (The more familiar you are with this material the less likely you are to accept the book's claim to being "a manifesto for a radically new way of understanding cinema.") Where the book really fails, I think, is in failing to provide a good example of what a filmosophical engagement with individual films would actually look like. Frampton's basic argument is that approaching cinema from the position of filmosophy allows for the realization of a new, more complex engagement with the richness of the film experience. But he never demonstrates this. When he does mention a film, he rarely has more than a few sentences of commentary about it. Instead, he spends a great deal of time repeating the same series of claims that he makes in the introduction. Stating something over and over again doesn't make it so. It just makes the reader increasingly less convinced by the arguments placed in front of them...

The title intrigued me. That being said, Frampton dishes up what has already been said by people before him, just in a new cover. Don't be fooled by those flashy descriptors on the cover like "manifesto" and "radical." You won't find anything life altering here.

What really did it in was his attributing Kristin Thompson's development of using concepts from the Russian neoformalists in film theory to David Bordwell. He wrongly indicates the ideas as being "Bordwell's" dozens of times and never even credits Thompson, despite her writing the book on the subject.

Nice try Frampton, better luck next time.

-Film Theory student who sees through Frampton's desperate and futile attempts to revolutionize the world of film theory as pathetic and poorly executed.

Filmosophy is accessible for those with anything from a limited to an encyclopedic knowledge of film theory. It posits a new way of thinking through film and by film. Film poetry becomes a philosophy - a way of explaining and understanding the 21st century. This book is destined to become a set text on all graduate film courses - I enjoyed it. If this is too expensive, why not try:

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