Eternal Sunshine of an Ignorant Mind
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life"
In one particular part of his masterpiece, "The Concept of Anxiety", the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard evaluates the difference between innocence and immediacy (with an anti-Hegelian midset) and why we should not end up confusing one for the other. He writes,
"Innocence is a quality, it is a state that may very
well endure, and therefore the logical haste to have it annulled is meaningless, whereas in logic it should try to hurry a little more, for in logic it always comes too late, even when it hurries"
Innocence, he says, is not merely an inferior state that requires a quick annulment with the information of the beyond. Innocence isn't always dependent on the meaning captured in its loss in order to derive meaning for itself. Innocence is a state in its own right, with its own meaning, its own narrative and its own way of viewing what it is and what it will be once it loses itself. There is an anxiety. Especially with regard to children, Kierkegaard writes,
"In observing children, one will discover this anxiety intimated more particularly as a seeking for the adventurous, the monstrous and the enigmatic."
This anxiety leads children to view adulthood as an answer to these questions of existence and meaning. A child accepts adulthood as a state that he is currently ignorant about, but which holds the promise of answering all the doubts that have been building up in his mind, doubts arising from watching his parents fight, watching his mother's face as being different from that of his father, the utter confusion at his body's and mind's fascination with a grown woman's nightdress and his desperation to throw it into the river so as never to feel captured by it and countless, infinitesimal other doubts.
Once adulthood is reached, however, the frustration of realizing the utter sham that is the "loss of innocence" hits the erstwhile child. In that sense the loss of innocence is not that of the child, but of the newly formed adult who was innocent enough to believe as a child that all his questions about life will be answered the moment he steps into adulthood, and this 'injustice' repeats itself at every stage of adulthood. At every stage that you thought would answer your questions you find that there has been a "loss of innocence" and that you are a little bit less innocent about the chances of there ever being an easy answer available and you start rebelling, and with every act of rebellion on your part, in Camus's words, expressing a nostalgia for innocence. Not the innocence of 'not knowing' but the innocence of 'not knowing that we cannot know'.
Finally, at the end of our lives, in that fleeting moment when our lives and all those associated with us seem to walk by us, we are able to meet our yourger selves -as a baby learning how to walk, as a yougster trying hard to please his father because of the abovementioned anxiety, as a brother who couldn't love either enough or just enough- and we have the chance of talking to them and reasoning with them, but we choose not to, for who knows what that might do? We choose to let all the processes be exactly as they are. Because though we may not know it yet, the fantastically complicated process in this universe that has led to our existence as an infinitesimal life form, must in itself, have some meaning greater than the one we search for in our everyday lives.
Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is a grand celebration of these ideas, with visuals of the kind you wouldn't have seen since 2001, A Space Odyssey. Of course, this is only my own interpretation of the movie and this is the kind of movie where each of you will have your own. There has been no other movie, I think (and I am expressing doubt here because this is a big statement to make), that provides as much to the viewer as the Tree of Life, and I cannot recommend it enough.
-Rahul Dash
"Innocence is a quality, it is a state that may very
well endure, and therefore the logical haste to have it annulled is meaningless, whereas in logic it should try to hurry a little more, for in logic it always comes too late, even when it hurries"
Innocence, he says, is not merely an inferior state that requires a quick annulment with the information of the beyond. Innocence isn't always dependent on the meaning captured in its loss in order to derive meaning for itself. Innocence is a state in its own right, with its own meaning, its own narrative and its own way of viewing what it is and what it will be once it loses itself. There is an anxiety. Especially with regard to children, Kierkegaard writes,
"In observing children, one will discover this anxiety intimated more particularly as a seeking for the adventurous, the monstrous and the enigmatic."
This anxiety leads children to view adulthood as an answer to these questions of existence and meaning. A child accepts adulthood as a state that he is currently ignorant about, but which holds the promise of answering all the doubts that have been building up in his mind, doubts arising from watching his parents fight, watching his mother's face as being different from that of his father, the utter confusion at his body's and mind's fascination with a grown woman's nightdress and his desperation to throw it into the river so as never to feel captured by it and countless, infinitesimal other doubts.
Once adulthood is reached, however, the frustration of realizing the utter sham that is the "loss of innocence" hits the erstwhile child. In that sense the loss of innocence is not that of the child, but of the newly formed adult who was innocent enough to believe as a child that all his questions about life will be answered the moment he steps into adulthood, and this 'injustice' repeats itself at every stage of adulthood. At every stage that you thought would answer your questions you find that there has been a "loss of innocence" and that you are a little bit less innocent about the chances of there ever being an easy answer available and you start rebelling, and with every act of rebellion on your part, in Camus's words, expressing a nostalgia for innocence. Not the innocence of 'not knowing' but the innocence of 'not knowing that we cannot know'.
Finally, at the end of our lives, in that fleeting moment when our lives and all those associated with us seem to walk by us, we are able to meet our yourger selves -as a baby learning how to walk, as a yougster trying hard to please his father because of the abovementioned anxiety, as a brother who couldn't love either enough or just enough- and we have the chance of talking to them and reasoning with them, but we choose not to, for who knows what that might do? We choose to let all the processes be exactly as they are. Because though we may not know it yet, the fantastically complicated process in this universe that has led to our existence as an infinitesimal life form, must in itself, have some meaning greater than the one we search for in our everyday lives.
Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is a grand celebration of these ideas, with visuals of the kind you wouldn't have seen since 2001, A Space Odyssey. Of course, this is only my own interpretation of the movie and this is the kind of movie where each of you will have your own. There has been no other movie, I think (and I am expressing doubt here because this is a big statement to make), that provides as much to the viewer as the Tree of Life, and I cannot recommend it enough.
-Rahul Dash
1 Comments:
Brilliantly written!
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