Reviews
The New York Sun
'Incisions on the Rock'
By Adam Kirsch
15 August 2005
Copyright 2005 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC. All rights reserved.
In the beginning, Western philosophy was profoundly mistrustful of the written word. Socrates was the first thinker to move beyond poetry and sophistry to what we now consider philosophy, yet his teaching was purely oral. To think with Socrates meant having dinner with him, walking home from a festival with him, or collaring him in the marketplace; he made philosophy an encounter and an experience, but not a text. That was left for Plato, his disciple, who used writing to preserve Socratic dialogues for future generations. Yet Plato himself feared that, by transforming philosophy into what it remains to this day - a matter of writing and reading, not hearing and talking - he was betraying its essence.
In his "Phaedrus," Plato records the myth of Theuth, or Thoth, the god whom the Egyptians credited with the invention of writing. Theuth urged Thamus, the king of Egypt, to teach his people how to write, claiming: "Here is an accomplishment, my lord the king, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians." But Thamus turned this boast on its head: "You who are the father of writing," he insisted, "have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful. ... And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality; they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant."
Today, for the first time since Plato, we are entering an era when writing may once again lose its place at the center of intellectual life. But we are not going back to the world of Socrates, where genuine thinking and teaching flourished in face-to-face encounters. In the age of television and the Internet, we are not returning to the preliterate, but descending into the postliterate. Writing may have been merely a trace of the genuine experience of philosophy, but what will happen when even the trace disappears, leaving nothing but images - the images that, to Plato, were the most transitory and untrustworthy of all things in this world of change? Can thinking take place in a visual medium?
That is the question posed, quite self-consciously, by "The Ister," a fascinating new documentary that made its debut in 2004 and has been slowly making the rounds of film festivals, art-house cinemas, and academic conferences. (Though it is available on DVD in England and Australia, screenings in the United States must be arranged through Brooklyn-based First Run Films.) "The Ister," shot on digital video by a pair of Australian graduate students, Daniel Ross and David Barison, is a nonfiction film but not a documentary, at least not in the usual sense: For while it does document many things, places, and people, its central purpose is not to record an event but to provide an experience - "not merely to illustrate but to provoke thought," in Mr. Ross's words. This high ambition makes "The Ister," which runs for three hours and took some five years to produce, an important test of whether the philosophical impulse can survive in the new world of images.
Plato's myth of Theuth offers a perfect route into the questions raised by "The Ister." For the major subject of the film is the power and danger of technology, of which Theuth, like the Greek Hermes, was the patron deity. And the filmmakers' major interlocutor, the philosopher around whom the film cautiously circles, is Martin Heidegger, whose suspicion of technology went hand in hand with a powerful challenge to conventional ways of writing and talking about ideas.
The film takes its name from a poem by Friedrich Holderlin, the late-18thcentury German Romantic, whose hymn to the Danube River called it by its ancient Greek name, "the Ister." More specifically, the film is inspired by a lecture course on "The Ister" that Heidegger gave in 1942,one of many he devoted to Holderlin's poetry. The formal structure of the film is simple but fertile: Camera in hand, Messrs. Ross and Barison (who never appear onscreen) follow the course of the Danube, from its mouth on the Black Sea back to its source in Germany.
Their travelogue pays careful atten tion to the bridges and ships and cities they discover along the way, thus providing an illustration of Heidegger's major theme - man's imposition on Nature, in all its destructive necessity. Messrs. Ross and Barison produce several lovely tableaux - of rivers, mountains, forests - but the visual strength of the film lies not in beauty but in clever juxtaposition.
In Romania the filmmakers visit the ruins of the bridge across which Trajan's armies marched into Dacia; in Yugoslavia they show the bridge at Novi Sad, destroyed by the NATO bombing campaign in 1999; in Hungary, they find a bridge at Dunafoldvar which was attacked by the invading Soviets in 1956. Over the course of the film, and with very little nudging by the filmmakers, the figure of the bridge comes to bear the full weight of Heidegger's critique of technology: As a human intervention into Nature, it is both essential to life and bound up with violence and death.
The bridges on the Danube are products of what Heidegger, in his essay "The Question Concerning Technology," called "enframing" - a way of thinking that makes Nature subordinate to human ends. In that essay, Heidegger showed how his thought about technology relates to his thought about poetry, and specifically the poetry of Holderlin. Taking up another one of the poet's river-odes, "The Rhine," Heidegger contrasts "'The Rhine,' as dammed up into the power works, and 'The Rhine,' as uttered by the artwork, in the Holderlin's hymn of that name." The contrast speaks volumes about Heidegger's sense of the betrayal of Nature - its reticence and mystery, the essential Being that Holderlin invokes - by technology, which turns it into merely an exploitable resource.
To the great credit of Messrs. Ross and Barison, however, they do not stop at simply illustrating Heidegger's thought; they allow it to be challenged, trusting the viewer to take part in a series of complex philosophical debates. These are expounded in the interviews that make up the intellectual pith of "The Ister," a series of talks with three French philosophers - Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. (There is also an interview, much less compelling, with the pompous filmmaker Hans-Jurgen Syberberg.) Editing their questions out almost completely, Messrs. Ross and Barison allow these thinkers to elaborate on their own disagreements with Heidegger's views on technology - disagreements that spring from a fundamental indebtedness and respect. Thanks to the informality of the settings - we see Mr. Stiegler quieting his dog and blowing out candles at his birthday party - the men become more than talking heads; we take in some of their eccentricities along with their ideas.
As the filmmakers' itinerary reaches Germany, "The Ister" turns to confront another, more controversial aspect of Heidegger: his embrace of Nazism, and his seeming refusal, even after the war, to acknowledge the magnitude of its evil. His lecture on the Holderlin poem, after all, took place at the height of the Nazi period and contained admiring references to "National Socialism and its historical uniqueness." Mr. Lacoue-Labarthe devotes most of his screen time to explaining Heidegger's infamous equation of the concentration camps with "motorized agriculture," and elaborates a powerful critique of Heidegger's view of history. And Mr. Stiegler, the most charismatic figure in the film, convincingly challenges Heidegger's bleak view of technology, arguing that were it not for technology - above all, that of writing - we could not live historically at all.
This lesson, too, is implicit in Holderlin's poetry; as he writes in "The Ister":
But the rock needs incisions
And the earth needs furrows,
Would be desolate else, unabiding.
"The Ister," then, not only contains a humanistic defense of technology; it is itself part of that defense, using one of the newest media to address some of the most ancient questions. The film cannot by itself serve as an introduction to Heidegger's thought, and much is inevitably simplified and taken for granted. To fully appreciate what Messrs. Ross and Barison are up to, it is helpful to have already spent some time with Heidegger's work. But the fact that it could be made, and even distributed, is heartening testimony to the potential of a usually barren medium.
Time Out, London
October 6 2004
The Ister(nc) (David Barison & Daniel Ross, 2004, AU) Documentary. 190 mins.
An ambitious philosophical video essay , 'The Ister' takes its cue from Martin Heidegger's 1942 lectures on the poet Friedrich Hvlderlin. Specifically, it's the latter's poem 'The Ister', musing on the river Danube, that exercises the controversial German thinker and provides the conceptual and visual framework for Barison and Ross' own meditation on his challenging philosophy. Journeying from the river's mouth to Germany, the film incorporates the reflections of key contemporary theorists on the changing nature of European civilisation and its conflicts, the role of technology and the character of philosophy itself. The result is a singular one, creating a layered and rigorous meditation on place and ethics that is strangely affirming.
Variety
October 2004
The Ister
(Docu -- Australia)
A Black Box Sound and Image production. (International Sales: Black Box Sound and Image, Fitzroy, Australia.) Produced, directed, edited by David Barison, Daniel Ross.
With: Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg
By SCOTT FOUNDAS
Life is a long, but hardly quiet river in "The Ister," in which a trip up the Danube gives way to an expansive journey of ideas about the evolution of Mankind and the development of Western civilization. TyroTyro helmers David Barison and Daniel Ross have sunk their teeth into a heady intellectual stew, and results are invigorating thanks to the filmmakers' inspired linkage of images and ideas and commentaries from three of the world's leading philosophers. Already a veteran of major festivals, "The Ister" deserves a shot at specialized theatricaltheatrical bookings, though tube airings will likely be more plentiful.
Pic's title derives from the ancient Greek name for the Danube, subsequently chosen by late-18th-century German poet Fridrich Holderlin as the title for his poem about the river.
In 1942, that poem became the basis of a lecture course delivered by Martin Heidegger at Germany's Freiburg U., which in turn has been cited by Barison and Ross as the impetus for their film.
However, much as Heidegger declined to interpret Holderlin's poetry for his students, so "The Ister" is a film driven more by the notion of exploration than explanation, with Heidegger's voice ultimately but one in the film's sometimes harmonious, sometimes cacophonous ideological chorus.
Starting at the Romanian mouth of the Danube, pic -- some five years in the making -- gradually winds its way along the nearly 3,000-kilometer path back to the river's source, near Germany's Black Forest. And at each step of the trek, Barison and Ross employ a who's who of contemporary thinkers as tour guides.
Among them is "Technics and Time" author Bernard Stiegler, who engagingly recounts the story of Prometheus, with fire giving rise to the contentious marriage of man and technology. As we journey further upriver, into the bombed-out cities of the former Yugoslavia and the skeletal concentration camp at Mauthausen, "The Ister" sees fit to remind us of some of the more troubling achievements of technical-age man.
Barison and Ross log considerable face time with Jacques Derrida associates Jean-Luc Nancy (whose autobiographical "L'Intrus" served as the inspiration for Claire Denis' recent pic of the same name) and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, who collectively help further the pic's discussion of the relationship between technology and politics, culminating in an explicit confrontation of Heidegger's own infamous claim that mass human exterminations like the Holocaust are but an inevitable byproduct of industrialized agriculture.
In pic's final stretch, controversial German filmmaker Hans-Jurgen Syberberg (the seven-hour "Our Hitler") takes the reins, leading the filmmakers to the Danube's source and beyond as he contemplates the difficulty by which art and artists attempt to represent history.
Presiding over such a philosophical feast -- at which it is possible to gorge oneself yet leave feeling elated -- Barison and Ross rightly minimize their own presence in the film. Instead, they focus their energies on pic's impressive visual design, which wonderfully pairs images captured along the way (in crisp, color-saturated digital video) to ideas being discussed onscreen.
If it is possible for a film such as "The Ister" to have a star, it would have to be Stiegler, whose convulsive energy and tufts of mad-professor hair jutting out from his balding head lend pic a special energy whenever he's onscreen (which is quite often). That, combined with the fact Stiegler began his career as an armed robber before turning to philosophy suggests he may be a subject worthy of his own film study somewhere down the road.
Camera (color, DV), Barison, Ross; sound, Frank Lipson. Reviewed on DVD, Los Angeles, Sept. 21, 2004. (In Melbourne, Brisbane, Vancouver film festivals.) Running time: 189 MIN.
The Evening Standard
September 23, 2004
By Derek Malcolm
THE ISTER ***
NC, 189 mins THE Ister is a famous poem about the Danube by Friedrich Holderlin, which inspired an equally well-known lecture course by philosopher Martin Heidegger delivered at a time in 1942 when the Nazis were preparing the Final Solution.
This three-hour documentary from David Barison and Daniel Ross takes three contemporary philosophers and Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, the German filmmaker, on a journey up the Danube, from the Black Sea delta in Romania to its Black Forest source. They discuss the poem, Heidegger and the course of Western civilisation on the way.
Fascinating, but not for those wanting to shut off tired brains in the cinema.
The Australian
August 4, 2004
'Along the Danube and into the deep end'
By Lawrie Zion
IT is more than three hours long and explores the theories of a German philosopher while wending its way up a European river.
A challenging package, you might think, even by the relatively adventurous standards of a film festival audience.
Yet this film, called The Ister, has been playing to packed houses everywhere from Rotterdam to Sydney and Melbourne. Few people have seen anything like it before.
Made by a pair of Melburnians armed with little more than a digital camera and a sense of inquiry, The Ister is loosely based on a wartime lecture delivered by ex-Nazi Martin Heidegger on one of Germany's most celebrated poets, Friedrich Holderlin, whose poem The Ister (an old Roman name for the Danube river) is another source of inspiration for the documentary.
But as we meander along the Danube from the Black Sea to the source of the river in Germany's Black Forest, more than 2000km upstream, the film offers a much broader series of connections and meditations from contemporary philosophers, as well as a Serbian engineer and a German botanist.
The idea arose from a PhD thesis that one of the film-makers, Daniel Ross, had written about Heidegger. Like his co-director David Barison, Ross was interested in making a film that might become part of a philosophical discourse rather than a mere commentary about a particular person's ideas.
Having bounced ideas around over thousands of coffees at Mario's in Melbourne's Fitzroy, the pair decided to embark on what would become a unique collaboration and headed for one of Europe's most famous waterways, which bears the scars of recent, as well as ancient, history.
But writing a thesis is one thing, making a film quite another. Not surprisingly, there were some difficult choices to make when it came to organising the material they gleaned from extensive road (and river) trips.
Ross was concerned that it be intellectually coherent.
"In the back of his mind was, 'What if Jacques Derrida sees this?"' Barison says.
He admits they had not decided on a stylistic approach when they started out, although he was inspired by a documentary called London and by the films of Terence Malick, who was also a Heidegger scholar before he became a film-maker.
It was important to give the film a structure and "a certain poetry" that would make its abstract ideas palatable to a broad audience.
This isn't to deny the film's intellectual rigour, especially in relation to Heidegger, who is the subject of extended commentaries from French philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Bernard Stiegler -- a genial middle-aged man with a colourful collection of cravats who became a philosopher in the 1970s while doing five years behind bars for a series of bank robberies.
Barison acknowledges that Heidegger was and remains a problematic figure. But he also believes that "it's too easy to say this guy was a Nazi and that everything he felt was rubbish -- end of story.
"So much of what he was talking about seems completely contemporary -- like his discussions of technology, which ... seem to become more possibly true by the day, especially with regard to the relationship between the human and technical."
For Barison, a political science graduate, former PR consultant and -- briefly -- a film student, the five-year process of making The Ister without external funding had its ups and downs. What sustained him was a love of the material, and the fact that he and Ross enjoyed "arguing and interpreting things ad nauseam. We have a lot of cultural reference points in common. All he has to do is mention a couple of words from GoodFellas and I know what he's talking about."
The pair plan to continue their working relationship with a film about Stiegler's transformation from thief to celebrated thinker and a possible television series that examines the role of violence in democracies. They also haven't ruled out that old behemoth -- narrative fiction.
But following this Friday's screening of The Ister at the Brisbane film festival, where it is expected to sell out -- as it did recently at the Sydney and Melbourne festivals -- it is unclear when local audiences will get another chance to see this most un-Australian of Australian offerings.
"We're showing it to a whole lot of ［independent］ French exhibitors in October and we've also had a TV sale to Finland," says Barison, adding that he hopes SBS will broadcast the film. "It's designed to have an intermission, so it could be screened over more than one night."
It's hard to think of anything that better fits the SBS charter.
The Melbourne and Brisbane film festivals end on Sunday.
