Part of Queer Qlassics
The last film Derek Jarman made while he could still see, WITTGENSTEIN is a triumph of ideas and textures run riot. Blending black box theatre, vaudeville, minimal sets and intricate costumes (including an unmatchable Tilda Swinton fashion show), the late great Jarman brings to life the many facets of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s life and work in a playful and provocative film that makes complex ideas feel eminently accessible — a queer legend who transformed aspects of thought whose story is also told by another queer artist, in what feels like a first.
Wittgenstein (played as a youth by journalist Clancy Chassay, and as an adult by Karl Johnson) is given an episodic (some would say near-pointillist) web of observance and experience that delights in all manner of human experience — the silly and the sincere, the fraught and the foolish. It’s the kind of film that feels like a dare in its audacity, a work that bridges Ken Russell’s biographies and Guy Maddin’s historical burlesques — with an exceptional cast (including Michael Gough as Bertrand Russell!) and a sense of thematic urgency still palpable 30-plus years after Jarman’s death from AIDS-related complications. Arch, daffy and defiantly moving, this is a singular and captivating experience, finally making its Nashville premiere.
“A unique biographical text quite unlike any other film biographies (except, perhaps, those of Ken Russell, for whom Jarman, early in his career, worked as a set decorator).” —Marjorie Baumgartner, Austin Chronicle “With WITTGENSTEIN he can imagine and present the interior life of a thinker slowly dying of disease, just like himself, and illustrate some of those ideas for an audience to preserve them forever.” —BL Panther, The Spool
