Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas

podcast. Today, as part of the episodes that were recorded live at the Regent Street

Cinema in London for

our Films of Ideas series. I'm going to be talking to the philosopher and writer Nikiel Khrishnan

about a film that really is about ideas. It is Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein. It was released in 1993.

It's very short. It's only 70 minutes long, but in those 70 minutes,

it packs not just a version of the story of Wittgenstein's life, but also a really interesting

exploration of his philosophy. And that is what we're talking about.

As usual, I want to just give a brief introduction to the film, because the conversation

you'll hear is in front of an audience who have just seen it, and you listening may well not

have.

Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein was originally planned to be made for TV and to be

even shorter than 70 minutes. But the script that was partly written by Terry Eagleton, the film was

produced by Tariq Ali, was thought to be something that deserved a cinema release. But it's a

pretty unconventional cinema film.

It is, apart from anything else, very stagey because it was all shot in a studio.

It was shot over just 12 days.

It is very minimalist, pretty minimalist sets, costumes.

It looks like watching a theatrical production, but it really works on the big screen,

and it does try to tell the story of Wittgenstein's life and also to explore the meaning of his

philosophy. It was a remarkable life, and it was, as you'll hear, I hope, a pretty remarkable

philosophy. In those 70 minutes, we get scenes involving Wittgenstein's family, so we hear about

...