TIFF 07

Due to the fact that the start of classes happened to fall on the Toronto International Film Festival, I was only able to take in two films. But, given the importance of choosing wisely under these circumstances, I don't at all regret the ones I finally ended up with. And it was especially nice to be able to catch the second film with Doug Cummings (who has written some of his own thoughts on the films he was able to take in on his always thought-provoking blog, filmjourney).

California Dreamin' (2007) Cristian Nemescu


As is well known, the director of California Dreamin’ (Endless), Cristian Nemescu, died in an untimely car accident cutting short his career along with his feature debut. As unfortunate as this is to the future of Romanian cinema, this story surrounding the film seems to have had the effect of overshadowing the film’s own merits. On the other hand, this news might draw some otherwise overlooked attention to this amazing piece of filmic cultural commentary.

I have often found the certain brand of humour employed in recent Eastern European films to be confusing, often uncomfortable and, at its worst, self-deprecating. An example of what I mean can be found in Kusturica’s Underground. In the case of Underground, I got the feeling that here was a film that seemed to be trying to reach out for recognition beyond Yugoslavia and thereby decided that self-mockery was the best way to do this. While not at all a film which panders to be anything but Yugoslavian, as there are a great deal of cultural subtleties on display, it felt as if it were less a celebration of Yugoslav culture and more an intentional parody of its distinctions, pandering for the purposes of pan-European acceptance. I raise this example to distinguish it from the humour Nemescu brings to his film, which serves the exact opposite purpose at heart. This is simultaneously a deadly serious film and an incredibly funny one.

Hans-Georg Gadamer said something to the fact that satirical inversion (of meaning) presupposes the world will recognize its own perversion in its inversion and, subsequently, see its true possibilities. Satire, then, shows the wrongness of the world as it is, exposing its moral hypocrisy.(1) Nemescu uses satirical humour in two ways: first, to show the differences between the American and Romanian approaches to war; two, to comment on Romania’s own willingness to buy into the myth of America.

In the first case we have Doiaru, a railway station chief who, for reasons slowly revealed to us throughout the film, chooses to act the role of the bureaucratic legalist, who decides to delay a train full of American soldiers indefinitely, with deliberate self-satisfaction. Captain Doug Jones, of the American army, is completely distraught about the possibility of his cargo (communication equipment at one time referred to, by the Romanians, as glorified phones) not making their strict deadline. This dichotomy is set up in a way which is intended to poke fun at the self-seriousness of the Americans, once again involved in a war which in no way concerns them, of which they have no real attachment or understanding, taking on the familiar role of world-saviours. The apparent differences in response to war marks this first type of humour, here applied, as social criticism, to the grave self-seriousness of American meddling.

In the second case we have a village of Romanians, led by an enterprising Mayor, shown as being capable of doing anything in order to get close to the American soldiers, to vicariously live through them in their previously unimagined, but for the moment fully realized, proximity to the ‘land of the free.’ And out come generations of pent-up fantasies waiting to be let out: the American flags are set up in town hall, that star-spangled tie the mayor owns finally comes to life, an oversexed reenactment of a Hammer-style Dracula performance is able to be shown to an appreciative audience, a small-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower serves its once ill-imagined tourist purposes. And of course, those with limited English quickly move up the social strata to be used by those attempting to communicate to the American soldiers. Here, Nemescu pokes fun of the lengths to which a community will go in order to hide their own culture in order to seem more American. The local boys are forgotten for the handsome soldiers and promises of being whisked off to the never-neverland of the USA.

This particular instance of American interventionism has the effect, in the film, of dividing the community, as is often the case. And the message we take from this is that while interventionism might be disastrous for the world, its horror is heightened after a lengthy period of isolationism. But that there was a period of true isolationism cannot even be rightly said, because while it is true no one came for Doiaru, as promised, when the Soviets were stripping him from the Romania he knew and loved after the Second World War, the myth of America was still sold, making its presence felt every day. We sense, from this second application of sorrowful humour, the lasting effect of intervention by way of globalization.

Only recently have I discovered that the parenthetical addendum at the end of the film’s title, Endless, generated from a mistranslation (the Romanian addendum would be better translated as unfinished, indicating the fact that Nemescu was not able to cut his own film and we are presumably seeing a different film than the one the director had intended). Despite this new knowledge, I still hold to my original thought that Endless is a perfect title for the film, albeit for entirely different reasons than those intended by the term unfinished. Endless is the impact of America on our world, be it through globalization, military presence, or absence after a promised appearance, passed on from generation to generation, sheathed in hollow dreams of that imaginary place called California.
(1) Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hegel’s “Inverted World,”” in Hegel’s Dialectic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 48-49.


Ne Touchez Pas La Hache (2007) Jacques Rivette

I have less to say about Jacques Rivette’s Ne Touchez Pas La Hache, as it failed to touch me like California Dreamin’ had earlier that day, or any Rivette I had previously seen, for that matter. I shouldn’t like to sound harsh right off the bat, but Ne Touchez Pas La Hache struck me as the least engaging of his films, a departure of sorts from his avant-garde works or romantic comedies. That said, the film still possesses a flavour identifiably Rivette’s. An impenetrable conversation between the friends of General Armand de Montriveau feels like a long-running inside joke much like the battle of intellectual wit between the main characters of Va Savoir had. The film is extremely contained and sparse in terms of characters, but richly detailed in terms of sets and plot development, a style which reminded me of Joan the Maid.

Although I have not had the chance to read Balzac’s Duchess de Langeais, I feel that I would have benefited immensely from a reading, as the film is extremely literary in style. In fact, if I have one complaint it is that the literariness of the film could be interpreted as limiting its cinematic possibilities. In fact, a great deal of humour, cleverness, as well as plot development is developed through the use of intertitles. At the heart of the film is a enjoyable tale of sexual tension between separated lovers, always occupying the unfortunate position of speaking past one another. Misinterpretation and its consequences inevitably follow, as is expected, which give the film some charm and free it from the musty effect an over-literary film can sometimes take.

So elaborate are the sets that the two protagonists seem to walk around with a self-aware, cautious prissiness that gives the impression that they are not only lost when it comes to each other, but lost in the enormous rooms of their own abodes. Every floorboard squeaking, the leather of every boot crunching under the friction, violating the silence of its surroundings has the effect of (as ironic as it may seem) giving the film a whimsical feel, as if Rivette was laughing at the effort Armand and Antoinette put into presenting oneself in a seemly manner. Admitted, there is a lot to appreciate here, but I think a second viewing, after spending some time with Balzac, might afford me with a more engaging experience.

Bad Infinity |Vis-à-Vis| True Infinity

Hegel characterizes finitude as the quality of negation in its extreme form. This finitude is determined by its possession of a limit. In the sense that the finite has a limit it is also admitting to ending somewhere – at the barrier of the limit – and points to something beyond the limit. In this way the finite is defined by what lies outside the limit – a product of its environment. For the finite, the infinite is its limit. The finite is defined by its limit, the infinite, and, described in this fashion, the infinite is distinct and limited by the finite. So, here, we have the infinite as characterized as limited and, thus, dependent on the finite. Insofar as the infinite is limited by the finite, the infinite is not truly infinite but, rather, a finitized infinite.

The genesis of this conception of a finite infinite is described thus: The finite has the seed of death in itself and it is in finitude’s negation of finite things where this death is brought about and, consequently, the demise of the finite thing. This move would, at first blush, appear to have brought us to pure nothing. Yet Hegel has proven that we can no longer posit pure nothing (including here, in the place of this finite thing) for, as we have seen earlier, pure nothing does not stay pure nothing but becomes becoming and determinate being. Thus, another determinate, finite being is introduced to replace the finite thing negated by finitude. This death, its ceasing-to-be, of the finite is its very determination (i.e., the finite is determined to pass away). But as soon as it passes away it is replaced as described above. This movement of change, or alteration, of continual death and resurrection, goes on endlessly and is, therefore, infinite. This is infinity as endless finitude, a cycle of finitude, or an infinite regress. Depicted in this way, the infinite is finite, but unbounded, like a line, endless in both directions.(1) Hegel describes this infinite as a spurious infinite or (in some translations) a bad infinite.

Adversely, the true infinite is the infinite security of the very being of the finite and thus affirmatively contrasted to the continual cycle of finitude’s negation of itself. Hegel’s model for this true infinite is the circle that is itself always what it is(2), contrasted with the line which implies infinity by way of an endless series. That is, in finitude’s endless negation of negation it has found its being-in-itself and coming into its own, for in ceasing-to-be finitude is what it is. Another way to put this is through the finite’s endlessness (bad infinity) it forms an unending identity which constitutes self-related infinity (true infinity). Finitude affirms itself, here, as the one-in-the-other as opposed to merely the continuous cycle of one-against-the-other --> death --> resurrection as one-against-the-other, ad infinitum. Now, all otherness is in and for it; “being in and for itself”(3) as independent being. Thus, finitude (determinateness through another) presupposes self-determination (true infinity/independent being) in the form of a return-to-self or self-relation. This coming-to-be what one is is what characterizes true infinity as both becoming and being.

In the true infinite we have the infinite as defined not as separate from the finite, or beyond the finite but, rather, as a type of residency (versus a transcendency), a process of development by which being is united with itself through the death of finite things and comes to its own in-itself. According to Hegel, the understanding (and the philosophers of the understanding) cannot think of infinity as anything but in a one-sided way as a transcendent beyond, an eternal separation.

The insight Hegel aims at establishing is one which curbs our tendency to think that everything is a thing opposed to another thing but, instead, as being in some way intricately connected as moments of a larger process, a process that cannot exist in separation from its parts. It is this framework of interconnectedness, or intersubjectivity, that can be seen to have influenced a great deal of Continental thought thereafter. Nevertheless, we might point out that at odds with Hegel’s critique of transcendence sits Levinas (amongst Gadamer and Derrida who have also defended a ‘bad infinite.’). Like negative theology, Levinas defends the infinite as a wholly transcendent other (in his case God or the face of another human), beyond the reach of the finite.(4) Insofar as the infinite is not a (finite) object at all, Levinas might argue, it is in no way finite and, thus, is pure exteriority which we, as separate from this pure other, cannot understand, control, or even think, and, therefore, cannot reduce to ourselves (we as finite cannot become infinite nor vice versa).

In the face of Levinas’s criticism, Hegel might ask how, in this case, it is that the infinite can be related to finite things if it were not conceived as the finite coming to its in-itelf via a process of self-negation (and thus, not an infinite beyond the finite as Levinas argues for). Hegel might argue that Levinas’s infinite is limited and insofar as it is limited and thereby determined by its limit and environment (its other, the finite), it is not truly infinite at all. The Hegelian criticism of this transcendence rests on the notion of limitation and argues for the conception of infinity as existing in and through finitude. If certain post-Hegelians wish to establish the task of setting up infinity as beyond the reach of the finite (or, put another way, wish to defend the status of our own finitude, as has often been the case) they must first respond to the logical fact that the limit they propose actually finitizes the infinite. This must be addressed if finitude or the bad infinite are to be defended.(5)


(1) G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. Arnold Miller (New York: Humanity Books, 1969) 148.
(2) Ibid., 149.
(3) G.W.F Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. Gustav Emil Mueller (New York: Wisdom Library, 1959), 107.
(4) Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969) 49.
(5) This is something I shall like to work on in the next year, especially as it concerns Gadamer's wish to "save the honour of the bad infinite."

Thoughts on Hegel's Move to the Sublation of Becoming and Determinate Being

To briefly summarize the passages preceding page 105 in The Science of Logic (A.V. Miller 1969 translation) for contextual purposes, we have seen that Being is initially pure (indeterminate) and immediate which is to say that there is nothing we can say about it which will in any way distinguish it from something else; it is, here, abstract and serves as a presuppositionless starting-point to philosophy. Insofar as we cannot distinguish it from anything else and it is immediate, Being is Nothing – they are the same. But Being and Nothing are, at the same time, not the same, for they are two different indeterminacies, continually vanishing into one another, and insofar as they must vanish into the other they cannot be the same. They are indiscernibly distinct.

This vanishing of one into the other is Becoming. The second(1) we think of Being, it vanishes into Nothing, and the second we think of Nothing, it vanishes into Being – this is the fluidity, the extreme indeterminacy, of Becoming. There are two moments, two processes, in, and which doubly determine, Becoming: ceasing-to-be and coming-to-be. As is straightforward from the descriptions themselves, ceasing-to-be is (immediate) Being changing into Nothing, and coming-to-be is (immediate) Nothing changing into Being. When either process is completed the process is immediately reversed: the result vanishes. This vanishing implies both a continuous disappearance (hiddenness, concealment) and reappearance (presencing, disclosure). Each moment implies and is, thus, united with the other moment: Being is Nothing and Nothing is Being. But the movement is always a to-and-fro, a back-and-forth, and this restricts the possibility of a side-by-side Being-Nonbeing unity. Insofar as this either of these processes of vanishing are circular and define Becoming each (coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be) is the very process of Becoming. But insofar as each vanishing is really the vanishing into the other it is understood as only a one moment of the greater process of Becoming. To describe Becoming this way is not the same as to say that, for example, my house IS and IS NOT, for in this example I am assuming a determination, and Becoming is not here seen to be a equation of the Being and Nonbeing of determinate things. That is, at this point the vanishing is Becoming, but not yet the becoming of something.

But there does seem to be an indeterminate determination of differences, for Becoming is sustained only for as long as Being and Nothing are distinct, passing into one another. Another way to put this is that you cannot “pass into” something that is the same. Difference enables the possibility of the movement of “passing into” or “vanishing.” So Being and Nothing can only vanish into one another insofar as they are different but the very indistinguishability of Being and Nothing, or the processes of Becoming, Being-into-Nothing and Nothing-into-Being, is the vanishing of this difference. If this distinctness vanishes, then so does the vanishing itself; that is, the vanishing that is Becoming can no longer sustain itself and it, too, vanishes (this is a vanishing of the vanishing) and is replaced by a state of idleness, a Determinate Being (Dasein). This could be seen as the ‘self-undermining’ of Becoming.

As Becoming stops, Being and Nothing are still distinct in a way, but are no longer absolutely distinct; that is, all sense of pure Being and pure Nothing – in the sense that one excludes the other – have fallen away. This indistinguishability fuses Being and Nothing together in a unity where they are no longer purely themselves. This purity, now lost in the newfound co-existence of Being and Nothing, had been retained in Becoming, as each process would vanish entirely, establishing the other in its purity, and then vice-versa. When pure Being and Nothing can no longer reappear, when they no longer vanish in order to reappear, they cannot be restored in their purity, and thus their purity is lost. Determinacy arises in the face of the loss of purity, at the point of the sublation of pure Being and Nothing.

This moment of self-impurification is the sublation of Becoming. The sublation of Being and Nothing’s former purity can be seen as a negation (it is the case that Being and Nothing are NOT pure, now), but not as an annihilation, because the moments of pure Being, Nothing and Becoming are now moments that led to a new configuration of Being (as Determinate). Insofar as it does not annihilate and builds upon what it has negated, it can be seen as a preservation. But Sublation is also a cessation in that Becoming is brought to a halt, no longer in an ever-changing to-and-fro with itself, but now settled into a pacified, “stable unity” or “oneness.” Sublation causes that which is sublated (in this case, Becoming) to lose its immediacy, but this is not analogous with a type of destruction that results in a nihilist reduction to Nothing, for Hegel refers to Nothing as sublated in this sublation.

We see here that Hegel thinks that both Heraclitean difference and Paremenidean purity are in a way analogous and are internally unsustainable. This movement to Determinate Being does not rest on our desire, as philosophers, to stabilize Becoming nor on our inability to see Becoming as anything but leading to Determinate Being. Rather, Hegel derives this logical movement of Becoming to Determinate Being, not on the basis of our personal demands but, from the internal logic of Being itself; that is, Being’s own structure necessitates this move to Determinate Being.

(1) This measure of time (seconds) is used in a strictly figurative sense insofar as Time has not yet been introduced into the Logic because Being is still indeterminate and Time would determine Being if it were to be introduced. Thus, Being is primordial to time. So we can say that (pure) Being is nothing more or less than Becoming, it is immediately Becoming, as Gadamer has pointed out in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, trans. P.C. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) 89