El VALDEMAR'S GOD The possibility of a philosophical cinema in Cao Guimaraes

Abstract

If philosophy has used narrative resources since its beginning to develop
its concepts, such as the philosophical figure or personification, dialogue, and
gesture, it is worth asking whether if cinema can achieve philosophical stands when
developing its blocks of sensations, to speak in deleuzian terms. In the mere act of
asking this question, certain filmographies with evident philosophical weight stand
out, among which the present essay studies “Andarilho”, a documentary film by Cao
Guimarães, proposing to analyze all that is philosophical in it –figures, gestures,
dialogues, textual concatenations or montage– finally discovering the staging of a
philosophical rivalry between a thought that expresses the end of Positivist Reason,
the absurd Camusian thought, and the possibility of a reasonable thought «in» the
Spinoza’s God.