Film Review
Cartesius (a.k.a.
Descartes) was the last of three
prestigious biographical films that Roberto Rossellini made for
television in the 1970s, the other two being
Agostino d'Ippona (1972) and
Blaise Pascal (1972). Towards
the end of his career, the director who first popularised neo-realism
in the 1940s with such films as
Roma,
città aperta (1945) and
Paisà (1946), enjoyed a
late flourishing of creativity through the medium of television, which
afforded him greater intimacy than cinema. A Franco-Italian
production made for Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) and Office de
Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF),
Cartesius was first broadcast on
Italian television in February 1974. Although it was filmed in
French (with a cast of mainly French and Italian actors), ORTF declined
to screen the film once it had been completed, and so it now only
exists in its Italian dubbed version.
Whilst it is a lavish production, paying close attention to period
detail both in its design and content,
Cartesius retains the cold realist
austerity of Rossellini's early work and consequently has a quiet
authority about it as it carefully dissects the man who is now
considered the father of modern philosophy. It doesn't only
recognise René Descartes' achievements (which effectively
rebooted philosophy in the 17th century and put mathematics and physics
on a sounder footing), it also shows us the kind of man he was - and it
is hard to imagine a less flattering portrait of genius.
Rossellini makes no secret of the fact that he was no great fan of
Descartes, and this is probably to the film's advantage. A
more admiring filmmaker would have found it hard to depart from the
popular image of Descartes as a disciplined and austere man of
intellect. Rossellini is nearer the truth when he portrays him as
peripatetic slob, the stereotypical student who finds it impossible to
settle and who rarely stirs from his bed before midday. Whilst he
doesn't refute Descartes' genius, Rossellini never lets us forget that,
for all the impact he had on modern thinking, he was still a sloppy
young man with a sloppy young man's failings, which involve getting his
servant girl pregnant, leaving his work (i.e. partially dismembered
animal remains) all over the place, and picking an intellectual fight
with just about everyone he comes up against.
In modern parlance, we would call Descartes a drifter. Freed from
the necessity of having to work for a living (thanks partly to his
knack of attracting sponsors), he wanders around Europe hoping to meet
and insult as many interesting people as he can. Like most of
today's students (but not necessarily for the same reasons), he is most
at ease in Holland, the country in Europe that was most receptive to
new ideas in the 17th century (everywhere else you were likely to be
flayed or burned alive), but he can't help nipping over to France or
Germany as and when the mood takes him. He scorns those who spend
all their time reading books, preferring instead to formulate his own
ideas whilst lying in bed until lunchtime. Descartes was the
model of the modern student, in more ways than one.
Descartes may have been a free-thinking radical, but he wasn't a
fool. He was not going to repeat the mistake of Galileo, who had
recently been imprisoned for heresy by the Catholic Church.
Having written his breathtakingly original
Treatise on the World (which, among
other things, gave a neat explanation for the motion of the planets
around the sun), he decides not to publish and be damned.
Instead, he makes a great play of working the Almighty into his
intellectual peregrinations, even coming up with what he believed was
the definitive proof for the existence of God. Rossellini leaves
us to make up our own mind as to whether Descartes' theological
reasoning stemmed from sincerely held beliefs or was merely a cunning
survival tactic, but considering the philosopher's subsequent career as
an overpaid court lackey (an episode which, alas, the film does not
show us), it is a question worth considering.
The film ends not with Descartes' premature death (through pneumonia
brought about by the ordeal of giving early morning lessons to Queen
Christina of Sweden) but with the publication of his great work
Meditationes de prima philosophia (
Meditations on First Philosophy, or
Metaphysical Meditations),
the text that upended Western philosophy and laid the foundations for
much of modern science. This is where Descartes first used his
famous phrase 'Cogito ergo sum', although the French equivalent 'Je pense donc
je suis' had appeared in his earlier
Discourse
on Method (1637). "I think therefore I am" encapsulates
the simplicity of Descartes' philosophy, and is just the turn of phrase
you would expect from someone who habitually spent his entire mornings
lying in bed, staring idly at the ceiling.
Some will doubtless consider Rossellini's tongue-in-cheek depiction of
Descartes to be a little unfair, if not downright heretical, but it it
brings us much closer to the man than a more reverent approach would
have done. It certainly helps to make him easier to identify
with, and, to be fair, Rossellini does show a more sympathetic side to
Descartes, through his concern for his faithful servant, his devotion
to his infant daughter, and his distress at the death of those
nearest to him. Whilst the film shows us only a part of the philosopher's
colourful life, it says pretty well all that needs to be said and goes
as far as any biographical work can to reveal the true
Descartes, the man, not the myth.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Roberto Rossellini film:
Roma, città aperta (1945)
Film Synopsis
By the time he leaves the Jesuit school he has attended since
childhood, René Descartes has a keen fascination for mathematics
and philosophy. Wary of the prevailing ideas, which have changed
little since the time of Aristotle, he contemplates a new philosophy,
founded on incontrovertible truths. Abandoning a career in the
law, he travels to Holland and enlists in the army of Prince Maurice of
Nassau, but, owing to a truce with Spain, he sees no action and has
time to continue his studies in mathematics. His geometrical
solution to a problem in algebra impresses Isaac Beeckman, the
principal of Dordrecht school. Travelling widely, Descartes gets
to meet many men of learning, but the more he hears the more convinced
he is that their approach to philosophy is flawed. If only it
were possible to extend the comforting certainties of mathematics to
other spheres of knowledge... Then, on a cold November night in
1619, during a stay in a heated room at Neuburg an der Donau, Germany,
Descartes has his eureka moment. He experiences three dreams
which open his eyes to a new philosophy built upon incontrovertible
truths. All true knowledge, he is convinced, should be deduced
from a set of fundamental precepts, the truth of which no one can
doubt. But what are these essential axioms of knowledge?
Then he has it: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am....
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.