‘Defend love as a real, risky adventure’ - philosopher Alain Badiou on modern romance.
Directed by William Williamson (williamwilliams...)
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For the French philosopher Alain Badiou, romantic love is ‘the most powerful way known to humanity to have an intimate relationship with another’. Love, he believes, creates a state of dependence that is an important counterweight to modernity’s emphasis on individuality. In this short film from the UK director William Williamson, Badiou argues that today’s approach to relationships, with its consumerist tendency to focus on choice and compatibility, and the ingrained refrain to move on when things aren’t easy, means that we need a philosophical reckoning with how we think about love. To make his view very specific, Badiou points to the ever-growing prevalence of online dating services that claim to offer algorithmic matching of partners, a way of seeking love that, he thinks, drains love of one of its most vital qualities - chance.
To make this film, Williamson devoted two years to pursuing a dialogue with Badiou, ‘I set a reminder to email Mr Badiou every fortnight until he finally agreed to meet with me.' The director approached this endeavour not just as a professional pursuit but as a personal quest to delve into the depths of love. For him, the decision to explore love was more than an artistic endeavour; it was a conviction that, as a culture, we often neglect contemplating love in its profoundest dimensions.
‘In our fast-paced world, we seldom take the time to ponder the complexities of love,’ Williamson said. 'It's a subject that gets fetishised, and its depths brushed aside or overshadowed by an ideal of what love is, and then we have these very, very unhelpful narratives of love found in contemporary culture. And I wanted to create something that compels us to pause and contemplate the essence of this fundamental force that shapes our existence.’
Badiou's philosophy implores us not to cower in the face of love but to perceive it as an odyssey that propels us towards the exploration of otherness and difference,' the director added. 'Ultimately steering us away from the modern fixation on the self.'
This project stands as a testament for those who believe that loving can change the way people think and that thinking can change the way we love.