Philosophical movies
September 12, 2010 7:51 PM   Subscribe

What are some classic movies that express strong philosophical themes that a high school film club should probably see?

Me and a few friends are starting a film club at our high school to watch movies with strong philosophical themes. The only catch is that we're a private Christian school so we can't have something with too much offensive (so from what I've heard, A Clockwork Orange would probably be out of the question). Fight Club would probably pass (it would be pushing it a bit), but we'd probably have to skip the sex scenes. Other than that, any movie suggestions are welcome! Also our first movie will probably be mid-to-late October so if there is a horror movie that fits the bill, that would be great!

Also, I've already seen this thread, but I'm looking for some more specific answers.
posted by Deflagro to Society & Culture (54 answers total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Thin Blue Line
posted by phunniemee at 7:54 PM on September 12, 2010


I think "Up In The Air" has some good stuff in it (though you might have to skip the sex scene in that, too).
posted by ambulatorybird at 7:56 PM on September 12, 2010


Gattaca, for sure.
posted by Tesseractive at 7:57 PM on September 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


Seven Samurai or Rashomon or Ikiru
posted by vincele at 8:00 PM on September 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


12 Angry Men
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:01 PM on September 12, 2010 [6 favorites]


Doubt.
posted by Obscure Reference at 8:01 PM on September 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


My Dinner with Andre.

Run Lola Run.

Previously.

A Clockwork Orange is not "probably" out of the question. It is definitely out of the question.
posted by John Cohen at 8:04 PM on September 12, 2010


Ikiru and Hara-Kiri. Both are Japanese and black and white, so it may be a challenge, but they're among my favorite movies.
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:05 PM on September 12, 2010


The Killing Fields (for hope and survival in the face of crushing odds (the Cambodian genocide)). Though John Malkovich does say "fuck" a bunch in it, he's awesome.
posted by artlung at 8:08 PM on September 12, 2010




The Truman Show
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:16 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


The themes of privacy and identity in North By Northwest might work.
posted by Lorin at 8:17 PM on September 12, 2010




I Heart Huckabee's!
posted by hansbrough at 8:22 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Coen Brothers' films would give you a lot to talk about inre absudism and nihilism. They're light and really funny, but if you stop to think about them, they are actually pretty meaty, especially A Serious Man and Barton Fink.

I also really like old German films for this kind of thing: Metropolis, M, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (which also has film's first special effects...)

When you're done with The Thin Blue Line, you could try A Thin Red Line.
posted by chicago2penn at 8:23 PM on September 12, 2010


As a junior in college I took a film class centered around the concept of freedom. Some of the movies we watched include:
-The Matrix (how do we know what's reality?)
-Gattaca (is biology destiny?)
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (are we doomed to make the same choices over & over again?)
-The Seventh Seal (to explore existentialism)
-Born into Brothels (Are we limited by economic circumstances?)
-V for Vendetta (I can't remember why we watched this one... something about political freedom, I'm sure)
-Do the Right Thing (something about freedom from injustice, I think...)
posted by lilac girl at 8:27 PM on September 12, 2010


Oh, and if you want horror, you should definitely watch Halloween. It doesn't have any really philosophical themes written into it, but there is a lot of great discussion that can follow from it. Why is it scary? (think Freud 'die Unheimliche') How does it play into stereotype in order to freak the audience out? Is there an archetype to scary campfire stories, and why might it be? Why is it so unsettling to have the murder scenes be shot from the point of view of the killer?
posted by chicago2penn at 8:28 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Not sure if they count as philosophical so much as ethics? but two of my favs from public highschool are Cry Freedom (about Steven Biko & aparthied) and The Mission (definitely check this one out! about Jesuits in S.America). Nominated & won an Oscar respectively.

Also Through a Scanner Darkly.

If you are looking for classics, have you skimmed the Academy Award winners/nominees or any Movies You Must See lists like this one by Jim Emerson or this one by NYT? Also searching online for movies for philosophy class or movies with philosophical themes finds some suggestions.
posted by SarahbytheSea at 8:40 PM on September 12, 2010


The Color Purple
posted by elle.jeezy at 8:43 PM on September 12, 2010


Memento
posted by mellifluous at 8:45 PM on September 12, 2010


Groundhog Day!
posted by sugarfish at 8:52 PM on September 12, 2010 [2 favorites]




Ghost in the Shell. The cyborg heroine actually spends time quoting Kant.
posted by fatbird at 8:56 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Seconding Gattaca, Truman Show, and 12 Angry Men.

Dear lord, do not force your friends to suffer through Run Lola Run.

Minority Report is also a good one.

I haven't seen it, but I imagine that My Sister's Keeper would be discussion-provoking.

I haven't seen the film version of Doubt, but I've heard it's not that great. The play is excellent - maybe do a table reading or see if it's being performed anywhere near you?

Also if you want to veer into television, I suggest watching a few episodes of Caprica (prequel to Battlestar Galactica). You don't have to know much about BSG to understand it (just that the Cylons eventually start a war with the humans). Caprica deals with the ideas of what is real and what makes us human.
posted by radioamy at 8:56 PM on September 12, 2010


There are a few Twilight Zone episodes that make for good, short viewings.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:01 PM on September 12, 2010


You could do a whole semester's worth of ethics and metaphysics just watching Star Trek.
posted by decathecting at 9:06 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Koyaanisqatsi
posted by phrontist at 9:49 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list is absolutely filled with gems, but I'm not certain how popular subtitles and slow paced European cinema would be with high school students. They're certainly worth the effort and likely to be thought-provoking though.
posted by Wemmick at 10:31 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice"
Paths of Glory
posted by rhizome at 10:33 PM on September 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Me, Myself, I (the Australian movie, not the Jim Carrey)
posted by eleanna at 10:39 PM on September 12, 2010


I second Minority Report. I can't think of a better film for such an occasion. The issues it presents are simultaneously accessible and rich, and it's a great movie all around. (Related trivium: the billiard balls which are carved whenever the precogs envision a murder are a direct reference to Hume)

Woody Allen can be a good source, too. For instance, my ancient philosophy professor presented Crimes and Misdemeanors as giving one answer to the question, "why be moral?"
posted by Maxa at 10:41 PM on September 12, 2010


I recommend this all the time, but I think Inherit The Wind is a great film, and offers lots to discuss, especially for high school age kids, since it involves how and what we teach our children and why.
posted by marsha56 at 10:47 PM on September 12, 2010


John Ford made several of the greatest movies ever made, and people from Orson Welles to Akira Kurosawa agree with me that he's the finest film director America has ever had. Nearly a hundred of his films are extant, and I can't claim to have seen even half of them; but there are many, many standouts, and what's amazing to me is that from about 1935 to about 1956 people were consistently remarking that his latest movies were some of the best ever made.

There are a lot of his movies that should make any short list of classics: the superb dark IRA drama from 1935, The Informer; 1939's Stagecoach, which Orson Welles claimed he watched forty times in preparation for making Citizen Kane, and which took a genre that was at the time unpopular and on its way out and gave it a quarter-century more life; the beautiful and lyrical How Green Was My Valley from 1941; there are many others. But I think two of his seem to stand above the rest, and are richest in philosophical and political thought:

The Searchers is not only John Ford's best film; it is close to being the greatest film ever made in this country. I'm certain it's better than Citizen Kane, at least, as great as the latter film may be. It is one of the very few works in the history of the film medium, I think, which is successfully esoteric – it is enjoyable and entertaining on several levels, all the while sustaining an inner narrative which is never made explicit throughout the movie. The narrative of The Searchers seems to make some sense to a casual viewer, but the more time you spend thinking about it, the more it begins to unravel, and you're left realizing that the mysteries at its heart point to deeper and subtler possibilities. The plot concerns racism, racism in its most unvarnished form, in the guise of an apparently irrational and unprovoked hatred that Ethan (played by John Wayne in his most impressive acting role) harbors for Indians and especially the Comanche; his displays of hatred are shockingly personal: he shoots the eyes out of Comanche corpses so that they'll wander forever in the spirit world of their religious belief; he doesn't hesitate to shoot down retreating Comanches who are trying to gather their dead and wounded. That's what you see on the screen: the relentless fury of this man who's among others in a search party (even these others are shocked and appalled at his hatred) chasing the Comanche in order to rescue two kidnapped young girls. But the film is actually about what causes racism, and where its roots are; the ways it leaves scars on us and makes us ugly, and the ways it actually represents a hatred of ourselves. It's only that those causes are a mystery maintained by the film, hidden at its center. I think John Ford did this in order to force the thoughtful viewer to riddle out this important question – what makes this man so hateful? – so that, in being forced to understand it in him, we could start to learn some lessons about where our own hatred begins. And it doesn't hurt that this movie contains some of the most viscerally beautiful and striking images ever caught on film.

The other John Ford film that I'd recommend in the context you're talking about is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, from 1961. It's a very rich movie as far as political ideas go; in some ways it's almost allegorical, in fact. It's about a lawyer from the East (played by Jimmy Stewart) who refuses to carry a gun on principle and comes to the West to help bring law to the new frontier and almost immediately finds himself beset by a laughing outlaw who mocks him derisively, robs him, and all but leaves him for dead. A rancher and gunslinging vigilante (played by John Wayne) hesitantly takes up his cause and advocates for him, since in fact there is no law, and the sheriff happens to be affable but spineless and ineffectual. The lawyer is determined to bring civilization and good citizenship to the frontier, and an integral part of that effort is his continued refusal to use guns; but at the same time he relies completely on the gunslinger to make his new world possible. That's an interesting interplay, and it was one that Ford explored in several films, but never more directly or with more clarity than in Liberty Valance, which also happens to be highly entertaining.
posted by koeselitz at 11:38 PM on September 12, 2010 [5 favorites]


The Nasty Girl, a gem of a film about what happens when a young woman investigates the Nazi doing in her small town in Germany.
posted by lois1950 at 11:43 PM on September 12, 2010


Grr. The Nasty Girl, ...investigates the Nazi doings... what a difference an s makes.
posted by lois1950 at 11:51 PM on September 12, 2010


Noriko's Dinner Table
Ghost in the Shell
Mr. Nobody
The Fountain

I'll think up more later, but browse these right now.
posted by Senza Volto at 12:05 AM on September 13, 2010


my high school film club totally adored the remastered directors cut of Aliens ... and you can read what philosophy you want into it ...

It is also the best-of-the-best of its genre ... being apocalyptic alien fight of attrition.
posted by jannw at 12:05 AM on September 13, 2010


Oh, and I should say that one of the classics of our time, and one of the greatest films made in the last ten years, is Florian von Donnersmarck's first film, Das Leben der Anderen, or The Lives of Others, from 2006. That film is strikingly good; it's attention to detail is so exact as to be obsessive, and it stands as, I think, almost an actual document of the terrible tragedy of the Socialist regime in East Germany and the unrelenting encroachment on privacy represented by the secret police. And it's a very personal and striking moral tale; it's about a loyal party officer assigned to track every move and observe every action of a certain playwright, listening to bugged conversations, tapping his phone lines, reading his letters, and watching everything that he does – and about the impact that that kind of intimacy with another human being can have on a person. Personally I think it should be required viewing in schools, even (especially?) private Christian schools. (There is a scene which depicts a rape, but it isn't explicit, although it is somewhat difficult to watch and is clear about what's going on. However, it doesn't involve nudity, and it is not gratuitous.) The ethical and moral implications are monumental, and it's hard not to be moved by it. It was apparently inspired by Lenin's remark that he loved Beethoven's Appassionata, but that he couldn't listen to it, because it made him want to abandon his project and be kind and good to people; von Donnersmark said in an interview I saw once that in thinking about this remark he had the deep and powerful conviction that he should force Lenin to listen to Beethoven – that if the Lenins of the world were forced to listen to Beethoven, things would really and truly be different. So he set up an analogous situation in the film: a loyal party officer is forced to listen to beautiful things created by a noble soul in the course of his duties. And that changes a person.

Great film, that.
posted by koeselitz at 12:06 AM on September 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Ox-Bow Incident staring Henry Fonda.
posted by GurnB at 3:42 AM on September 13, 2010


The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary on Robert McNamara. I teach it and it goes over well--it has a lot of significant lessons about the use of power, and McNamara is a remarkably circumspect and articulate speaker, even at such an advanced age. Great movie, even though it can be argued Morris pulled his punches.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:01 AM on September 13, 2010


Light in the Piazza with Olivia de Haviland. It will lead to a discussion of how we treat people with disabilities and their acceptance/rejection in our culture.
posted by eleslie at 5:49 AM on September 13, 2010


Fahrenheit 451 might be appropriate.
posted by Neiltupper at 6:33 AM on September 13, 2010


Face in the Crowd
Ace in the Hole (also called The Big Carnival)
Paths of Glory

I also agree with Doubt, Inherit the Wind, and 12 Angry Men.
posted by aabbbiee at 6:47 AM on September 13, 2010


In a lot of ways, WarGames is a surprisingly deep movie. There's a brief but unmistakable allusion to skepticism vis-a-vis machine intelligence, along with the usual panoply of sentient AI issues; of course, the backdrop is all nuclear weapons and foreign policy, with the attendant political and ethical underpinnings. It's also a very well-crafted thriller and a perfect film club movie.
posted by AkzidenzGrotesk at 9:48 AM on September 13, 2010


You've had a couple good Kurosawa recs, and I'll add a vote for Yojimbo. The main character is a samurai who has lost his patronage and basically has to build a new value system from scratch. How he does it is funny and exciting, and it's a terrific exploration of existentialism to boot.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 9:52 AM on September 13, 2010


If your conservative Christian high school is going to come down on you for watching films with nudity, sexual themes, etc, what about just not watching movies where that's a big thing? There are a million movies that just don't have a lot of sex in them, and that's OK.

For instance, this is a great opportunity to see older films then most young people typically know about. Constant sex and nudity has really only become a thing since sometime in the 90's - even the 60's and 70's movies that were considered so risque have nothing on a film like Kids.

Movies that were made during the Hayes Code period would be a good place to start. Anything by Hitchcock, for instance. Citizen Cane. The Searchers. The Red Shoes. All the classic film noir stuff.

From there you could move to things from the 60's and 70's that are still not as sexed up as more recent films. What about All The President's Men? Even stuff like Taxi Driver and Chinatown, which have plots that hinge around sexuality, don't actually have a lot of nudity or sex scenes in them.
posted by Sara C. at 10:14 AM on September 13, 2010


Ugh, that should be Citizen Kane. Durrrr....
posted by Sara C. at 10:16 AM on September 13, 2010


Sunset Blvd.
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:10 AM on September 13, 2010


Although it is rated PG-13 and is not a "classic", I think that AI is an intense, interesting, and touching movie with many important philosophical undertones. I often wonder why it is not more popular. There are some sexual themes, but they serve more for discussion about society than for lurid purposes. Some of the questions posed in this movie (imo) include: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be unique? What are some of the fundamental needs of a human being and how do they affect the characters in this movie? Really, I would suggest you watch it first and decide. If anything, you will have just watched a great movie!
posted by delicate_dahlias at 11:17 AM on September 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


It's incredibly gruelling in parts (to understate things wildly), but Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing sure makes you think.
posted by HandfulOfDust at 12:53 PM on September 13, 2010


Kids makes no sense. It's not philosophical (except in the sense that any movie could be analyzed philosophically), and it's not appropriate for this audience.

I would also avoid I Heart Huckabee's. It does have philosophy in it (e.g. the vacuous observation that "everything is connected!"). But as someone who's taken a lot of philosophy classes and has a degree in the subject, I can tell you it has little if any serious philosophical substance. Of course, this is just my opinion, but I certainly wouldn't assign it in a philosophy class.
posted by John Cohen at 3:23 PM on September 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Not sure if these are considered classic, but they're really good:

To Sir with Love
Being There
The Razor's Edge
Blade Runner
Dead Poet's Society
Good Will Hunting
The Matrix
Life is Beautiful
Schindler's List
The Shawshank Redemption
posted by Majorita at 6:57 PM on September 13, 2010


Judgment At Nuremberg and 12 Angry Men (nthing). Everyone should see both of these movies, especially high school age kids. Judgment At Nuremberg really goes beyond the historical parameters of its plot; it delves into the topic of personal responsibility in the face of unspeakable atrocities, and, I think, it goes far beyond its story and the World War II era. It makes for a rethinking of other historical eras and, even, culpability in current events. Who's to blame and how deep is personal responsibility? And the acting is incredible. For both films.
posted by Mael Oui at 8:20 PM on September 13, 2010


The Wave (2008) is German but perfect for a Christian high school setting.

Seconding Rita Hayworth.

Good suggestions above but some are so popular that half the club may be already seen it. I also fear today's kids don't know how to appreciate black & white movies.
posted by jayne at 8:23 PM on September 13, 2010


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