Sunday, December 02, 2007
There's yet another literary work based on Martin and Hannah: What is thinking?
With all the recent works about those two, I suspect there's probably a biographical script being shopped around the studios, which immediately leads to the question: How will Heidegger be portrayed in the cinema? I expect the plot of any Heidegger biopic will revolve around his involvement with Hannah Arendt and the Nazis, with a screenplay by Jan Jelinek and director Paul Veerhoven, and star John Malkovich and Maria de Medeiros in the lead roles--Ms. Madeiros's costumes by Bela's Dead. I can picture the tender separation: Martin saying goodbye to Hannah at Freiburg airfield, as the Gestapo closes in. "Last night you said I was to do the thinking for the both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it. You're getting on that plane." The airplane's propellers fire up. "But what about us?" "We will always have Marburg."
The movie could present a more rounded portrait of Heidegger by alluding to what else, besides tutoring Hannah, Martin is known for. Explaining anything about his way of thinking would require a break from the main plot (a sequence of chase and love scenes), so the movie should probably have differently paced segments, perhaps from other directors. I'm visualizing a Malickish segment where Heidegger leaves his hut with a walking stick and sets off down the country path. He exchanges a gnomic greeting with a passing farmer. The sun filtered through autumn tree leaves. A hedgehog's head pops up and looks around. Heidegger pauses to look out over the overcast valley. On a patch of earth he writes with his walking stick: τὸ ἄπειρον. The clouds part, he looks up, the sun shines across on the valley, for a moment only. ¶ 4:05 AM
With all the recent works about those two, I suspect there's probably a biographical script being shopped around the studios, which immediately leads to the question: How will Heidegger be portrayed in the cinema? I expect the plot of any Heidegger biopic will revolve around his involvement with Hannah Arendt and the Nazis, with a screenplay by Jan Jelinek and director Paul Veerhoven, and star John Malkovich and Maria de Medeiros in the lead roles--Ms. Madeiros's costumes by Bela's Dead. I can picture the tender separation: Martin saying goodbye to Hannah at Freiburg airfield, as the Gestapo closes in. "Last night you said I was to do the thinking for the both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it. You're getting on that plane." The airplane's propellers fire up. "But what about us?" "We will always have Marburg."
The movie could present a more rounded portrait of Heidegger by alluding to what else, besides tutoring Hannah, Martin is known for. Explaining anything about his way of thinking would require a break from the main plot (a sequence of chase and love scenes), so the movie should probably have differently paced segments, perhaps from other directors. I'm visualizing a Malickish segment where Heidegger leaves his hut with a walking stick and sets off down the country path. He exchanges a gnomic greeting with a passing farmer. The sun filtered through autumn tree leaves. A hedgehog's head pops up and looks around. Heidegger pauses to look out over the overcast valley. On a patch of earth he writes with his walking stick: τὸ ἄπειρον. The clouds part, he looks up, the sun shines across on the valley, for a moment only. ¶ 4:05 AM
