Simone Weil's Ethics of Love and Film Form

Abstract

Simone Weil is not a thinker one would usually associate with film. Her concerns are found in the philosophy of Plato, in Christian mysticism, and in an ethics of love that demands the withdrawal of the self from the world. Yet this article argues that her thought has a good deal to say about film, and specifically about what the formal conditions of filmmaking make possible ethically. It works through three of her central concepts (attention, metaxu, and decreation) and in each case argues that film is structurally suited to embody what these concepts mandate. A film is never the work of one person, and what it shows is always mediated by cameras, cuts, sound, and the sheer passing of time in a darkened room. These are features of the medium, and they correspond to Weil's ethical call. The article draws on a range of contemplative filmmakers to press the case and concludes that filmmaking and spectatorship, understood through Weil, can be thought of as practices of love.