January 2025 - Deep Focus Philosophy

The Tree of Life + Nature vs Grace

Terrence Malick’s magnum opus The Tree of Life is striving to be more than a film; it is a philosophical meditation. One which doesn’t unfold in the traditional sense but drifts like memory, weaving between cosmic grandeur and childhood recollection, between whispered prayers and the silent weight of suffering. It’s a film that asks the biggest questions—why are we here, why do we suffer, and where do we find grace?

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Existentialism

Predator + the Übermensch

If you strip Predator down to its core, beneath the layers of mud, blood, and 80s action bravado, what emerges is a tale as old as time—survival, a story of predator versus prey, the hunter and the hunted. However, each blow for blow, trap, and kill actually ends up revealing a cinematic arena where primal instincts clash with existential philosophy.

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Stalker + Art

Andrei Tarkovski's Stalker is a profound journey through existential, metaphysical, and epistemological themes which, compelled by its transcendental style, implores its audience to meditate, look within, and therefore becomes something more than mere philosophy, doctrine, idea, ideology, logic, outlook, reasoning, theory, thought, truth, wisdom, ectara. It becomes a living thing. A conscious art.

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Aesthetics

Bram Stoker’s Dracula + The Sublime

The sublime is summarized by Simon Morley in his article A Short History of the Sublime (as that which) underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic. When I first read this summary, I was struck by how similar this description is to the spirit of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and in turn Francis Ford Coppola’s adaption.

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