I was reading over the Coda in Sinnerbrink's book and I got to thinking about how the film-philosophy movement plays out. He ends up defining it as a romantic-reflexive movement that uses hermeneutical means to move beyond simply being explanatory, argumentative, or theoretical.
From this, I draw the idea that Sinnerbrink's film-philosophy concept seems to concern the idea that films do indeed speak - they say something to us, of which we must interpret. Our preconceptions of theory, argument, and explanatory frameworks don't let us experience the film - they simply offer a playground for philosophy to re-affirm itself.
If this is the case, then I find that Heidegger's writing on The Origin of the Work of Art fits in somewhat nicely with the film-philosophy aim. It's a rather dense read so I won't go too much into it, but a quick summary might do: (1) Heidegger is after the thingly thingness of art - what makes an artwork an artwork? (2) He denounces the matter-form distinction as offering any glimpse of the true thingness of art because that leads us to conceive of things as pure equipment. (3) He argues that artworks speak to us and unconceal their being. Art is literally "the becoming and happening of truth" (p.354).
Here's a passage that I think ties nicely into our present inquiry: "The work's reality is determined in its basic features by the nature of the work's being. We can now return to our opening question: how do matters stand with the work's thingly feature that is to guarantee its immediate reality? They stand so that now we no longer raise this question about the work's thingly element; for as long as we ask it, we take the work directly and as a foregone conclusion, as an object that is simply there. In that way we never question in terms of the work, but in our own terms. In our terms - we, who then do not let the work be a work but view it as an object that is supposed to produce this or that state of mind in us" (p. 352).
Notice how this fits into many of the problems Sinnerbrink discusses. Taking the work as a foregone conclusion is perhaps how the analytic/cognitivist sees film, as an object that is simply there. When we question a work in our own terms, perhaps we question a film through philosophy, completely cutting off the simple experience of the film's Being. This wouldn't let the film be a film (work be a work) but an object that merely produces some state of mind.
What is the truth of Being for Heidegger? What is the truth of film? I interpret Heidegger as meaning that the truth that is unconcealed in artworks is the very pure and simple nature of their Being - a bold affirmation of "that it is." That's how they speak to us. A Being that is free of human concepts (such as equipmentality). What is the truth of film? Perhaps it's whatever we make of it using the hermeneutical method. The point is that we have allowed ourselves to experience the film. If it's so difficult to know true Being, to understood truth in unconcealedness, then it makes sense why we have a hard time accepting interpretations of films by various philosophers. Heidegger asserts that we never know thingness - we never know the Being of the world directly. The Being of artworks - the truth that they reveal, is a semi-mystical experience that we must interpret.
Perhaps it's no surprise that Cavell uses Heidegger from time to time...
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Quotes from:
Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art." In Art
and Interpretation.
Ed. Eric Dayton. Toronto, ON: Broadview Press, 1998. 345-354. Print.
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