The knee-jerk flag-bearers of “Existentialism” are Sartre and Camus, but a recent viewing of Ingmar Bergman’s stunning Persona – my embarrassingly belated introduction to the filmmaker’s work – makes me think that maybe the concept (or genre) was never handled as deftly in print than on film. The Stranger is a great book –it’s finale in particular. But while Meursault’s narrative and outlook typify everything existentialist, Camus hardly makes the reader sympathize with the character’s eroding metaphysical grounding (the “why” of the matter) and we are left with a little more than a closing tirade – though fantastic — to delineate the existentialist worldview. The narrative arc on whole is mostly compelling but its flatness, though certainly intentional, prevents a certain salience. I’m not sure when it became gospel that such flatness in exposition need be married to existentialist art but perhaps the primacy of a thematic agenda is responsible. Whatever the case, films like Persona and Antonioni’s The Passenger prove that it’s not a necessary pairing. But I guess it depends on whether we want to define existentialism as “existence precedes essence” or as the experiential encounter with the terrain of total subjectivity. The former was probably seen as a bit antiquated and simplistic within a decade after its inscription, while it’s hard to see the latter losing its appeal.
October 28, 2007...7:17 pm
Some Notes on Existenialism and Narrative
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