At the risk of taking cinema too seriously.

Heidegger proposed a resolution of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature which made thought and poetry into the twin summits of human achievement, different form one another but of equal dignity.

This goes together with the conviction that eminent works of art will repay a high level of attention by giving something back to the patient thinker. Heidegger sought to listen to poems in order to hear the echo of a primordial, forgotten truth. The poem knows something, and if you listen to it carefully enough it may be willing to share its knowledge with you.

This has nothing to do with traditional literary scholarship or commentary, though Heidegger drew on them when it suited him. Rather, Heidegger's devotion to poetry depended on the possibility of an intense encounter between thinker and poem which should take place outside restrictive academic norms.

Heidegger knew full well that he would seem to some to be pressing the poem too hard, seeking out nuggets of meaning through excessive, unregulated interpretive acts. Heidegger's point was that it is only by taking the poem seriously, at the risk of taking it too seriously, that it might consent to yield its secrets. Luckily for him, he didn't have to worry much about the constraints of peer review.

Whereas Heidegger thought mostly about poetry, it is only a small step to extend the same intense attention to other art forms, including cinema. Heidegger might not have liked this trivialisation of his approach, but it is in the nature of ideas to spin out of the control of any individual thinker, however prestigious he may be. High and low art are now scrutinised not just for what we might learn about them but also for what we might learn from them.

From Colin Davis on the ethical devastation of Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, in TPM Issue 47.  ¶ 9:48 AM