Existentialism

 

Introduction to Sartre and Existentialist themes 

Nausia which was written by Sartre translated into Sinhalese as ‘Jugupsāwa’ by Ranjan Premathilake Hapuārachchi and Being and Nothingness (1943) was Sartre’s major contributions to existentialism. According to Sartre, ‘existence proceeds essence. To illustrate, first human being exist and then he tend to define himself through the actions that they are perform. He denies the existence of God as he suggests the freedom of human beings. In summary, existentialism considers human being as the center of their philosophy and their actions and choices that they make gives a meaning to their lives. There should be at least one human character that is drived which indicates the existentialist themes through that character or by the other characters that is influenced the main character.

Thus, human beings were disentitled their existence. For Sartre, religion, traditional culture, and the society cannot help with that as existence is itself a war. He emphasized free-will. However, the example of a waiter indicates that particular person does not have a free-will. However, we are free to dismantle capitalism. To illustrate, money is the factor, which discourages people from experiencing freedom. Existential themes can be summarized as hope, loneliness, despair, choice, anguish, responsibility etc. 

Introduction to existentialist films and novels

The books and the films which are able to extract meaning by analyzing then through existential themes can be classified as existential films or books. Existentialism is humanism.  It is possible to identify several existential films as The seventh seal (1957) by Ingmar Bergman, 2001: a space odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, the bicycle thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, things to come (2016) by Mia Hansen, wild strawberries (1957) by Ingmar Bergman, Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky, Anomalisa (2015) by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson and the 400 blows (1959) by Francois Truffaut. Most of them are French films as they have a direct influence of the existential movement done by existential philosophers. 

In addition, there are some other films such as one flew over the cuckoo’s nest directed by Milos Forman in 1975 and taxi driver which has directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976, thus, Prof.Desmond Mallikārachchi categorized the film Ikiru which has written by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1952 as an existential film which introduced capitalist ideals. 

The novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ that has included many existentialist views can be considered as the Dostoevsky’s masterpiece. Thus existential themes as faith, freedom, love and loss has discussed in that book. In addition, it has included about the people who are straggled, oppressed and felt the meaninglessness of the life. Thus, Pensées which was written by Pascal who was an existentialist thinker has also stated about the human life and meaninglessness of life. 

Lester James Peris was a great director who portrayed existential realities along with psychological topics in his films. Tissa Abeysekara made Martin Wickramasinghe’s novel Virāgaya that has included the existential themes into a film.  Malagiya Atto, which is written by Ediriweera Sarathchandra, has a similarity with Virāgaya the character of Devendorā sung is similar to the character of Aravinda. 

References 

Flynn, T. (2006). Existentialism (A very Short Introduction). New York: Oxford University Press.

Macquarrie, J. (1972). Existentialism . Middlesex, England: Penguin Books.