Amélie, fenomenologa senza saperlo. Una lettura in chiave pedagogica del film Il Favoloso Mondo di Amélie

Abstract

This essay is a paedogogical interpretation of a recent film and looks at its many connections with education, self-education and the construction of the self. The film leads the viewer to question the nature of the meaning we attribute to life and the possibilities and limits of interpretation. The author's starting point is the importance in the film of the look on the face and the director's attention to the significance of the face, which is in line with the views of E. Levinas. The author states that a number of images in the film can be interpreted symbolically as paedogogical devices for the construction of the self, education and self-educotion, i.e. the photo-puzzles, the intiation into knowledge of the other, the face photo album, the box of objects from childhood and the picture reproducing reality. One reason for the film's paedogogical interest is the importance it places on desire, the need to talk about oneself in a wide variety of ways and to talk about the existence of others. There are, in fact, a number of biographical and autobiographical techniques, such as oral autobiography, letter writing, cataloguing reality, biography in images, a daily diary, a tape-recorded diary, the autobiography as novel and videomessagges. Amelie, the main character in the film, is seen by the author as a person who has educated herself as she grew up, in her inner life, in silence and in the care she takes of herself. Only when she has realized she has an inner life of her own does she recognize herself as someone who has a reason for being in the world and who is someone capable of action.