Iconic Spaces: The Dark Theology of Samuel Beckett's Drama

Chapter 6. The Reduction of Film

149 C h a p t e r 6 The Reduction of Film Film, first shown in 1965, was Beckett’s first and remained his only excursion into the world of filmmaking. Not surprisingly, it is not the work of an accomplishe d filmmaker: it betrays Alan Schneider’s inexperience at directing films (it was Schneider’s first, too) as well as Beckett’s in writing for the screen. But the film falls short not only in terms of execution. Thematically also, critics have found it less satisfying than Beckett’s other work. Jane Alison Hale, for instance, thinks that it is less complex and hence less evocative than much of Beckett’s work because in the film he limits himself to the illustration of one specific theme— esse est percipi. Hale goes so far as to claim that Beckett’s central concern in Film is “to illustrate a philosophical ‘truth.’”1 Later in this chapter I return to this point of criticism by asking what precisely the relationship is between Beckett’s film and Bishop Berkeley’s famous dictum. Critics in general, and Hale in particular, have too readily assumed a straightforward and unproblematic relationship between the two. One wonders to what extent the impression of single-minded, onedimensionality is much rather due to the very different formal structure of Film in comparison with Beckett’s other work. David Lodge observes 150 Iconic Spaces that, in contrast with Beckett’s work for the theater, the “plot” of Film follows a “logical space/time continuum.”2 In other words, as soon as Beckett switches to a metonymic medium his otherwise dominantly metaphoric work conforms to the horizontal and linear structures of metonymy. If this is the case, one has to ask to what extent Film, especially given its title, is a fundamental appraisal of the genre, since it obviously led Beckett in a direction he otherwise would not have taken. Beckett’s tendency to explore the nature of a given genre and to take it to the limits of what it can do might find another manifestation here. This is one avenue criticism on Film has taken: Raymond Federman takes Film to be an investigation of “the essence of cinema, that is to say, visual expression of life and movement through photographic manipulation . If we accept this as the basic theme, we can then accept Film as a work of art which exploits its own substance so as to reveal its own limitations and failure.”3 Enoch Brater, although oriented differently, also puts the emphasis on genre critique: “Film is, then, about the process of film-watching.”4 Or, alternatively, does the critique of genre recede behind an illustration of Beckett’s own artistic theory? Vincent Murphy is convinced that Film “condenses in it some of the most consistent and recurrent themes in the Beckett canon” and Brater agrees that it presents those central themes in specifically cinematic terms.5 One must ask, then, to what extent Beckett might have chosen film because its genre-specific characteristics gave him a unique opportunity to carve out central characteristics of his own artistic theory. Film does not merely illustrate a “philosophical truth,” let alone one that defines a philosophical system quite different from Beckett’s own (Berkeley’s). While it does investigate a philosophical issue artistically, Beckett’s emphasis, here as elsewhere, is the clarification of his own dilemmas and obsessions. As in his other works, Beckett tries to clarify his own relationship to visuality. Film is an allegorization of the process of seeing and, by extension, an allegorization of the failure of the phenomenological reduction: can a thing be identical with itself and is it hence possible to perceive it in its essence? Film answers “No.” In the Phenomenology of Perception Merleau-Ponty teaches us that the phenomenological reduction is necessarily incomplete .6 We are no transcendental egos—pure intellect—but embodied, fallen beings inseparable from the natural world around us. Merleau- The Reduction of Film 151 Ponty questions the feasibility and spiritual desirability of the transcendental reduction à la Husserl. He stresses our original inherence in the world and our nondual inseparability from it. The transcendental ego becomes questionable. If phenomena are to disclose themselves, it must be according to their own givenness, not the constitutive criteria of transcendental subjectivity . Jean-Luc Marion calls this the “third reduction” to givenness, which comes after Husserl’s transcendental reduction to objectness...