Thought-Images: A Brief History of Time

Abstract

Errol Morris (U.S.) is a Platonic film-maker; he mistrusts the seductive ambiguity of images and applies much ingenuity to its staging. Like The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time (1992) is a filmic portrayal of concepts, based on Stephen Hawking's book with the same title. One is reminded of Robert Musil's attempts, in his essayistic novel The Man without Qualities, at superimposing the abstract on the concrete, the concrete on the abstract. Morris, too, is concerned with what Musil called “the second dimension of thought,” the sensual and emotional grounding of ideas. A Brief History of Time is a reflection, in images and sounds, on the meanings of the vita contemplativa. It is not, as many reviewers have said, an adoring portrait of a super-intellectual hero. Clearly, Morris has been awed by the conceptual scope and imagination of Hawking's work. But his showing the man's power of thought also raises many questions about the nature of such power.