Review by Choice Review
In Film and Ethics, Downing (Univ. of Exeter, UK) and Saxon (Univ. of London, UK) attempt a double contribution to film studies and ethical philosophy. Accordingly, "ethical film criticism," discussing the ethical implications of the act of gazing in contexts as diverse as pornography and filmic depictions of suffering, is introduced as a new discursive construction, called upon to break the ground for an encounter between the two fields. The weakness of the book, however, is that it does not manage to entwine, in a convincing fashion, concrete films and more abstract philosophical approaches. In each chapter, the "theoretical" sections are set apart from the treatments of particular cinematic works, which, more often than not, are rather descriptive and dry. Moreover, the interventions in ethical philosophy operate at a high level of generality and do not add anything substantively new to the interpretations of Levinas, Derrida, and Lacan, among others. The book thus lives up to its subtitle in an unintended way: the encounters of film and ethics remain foreclosed, with the two fields still hermetically sealed to each other, despite the promising endeavor to which the authors committed. Summing Up: Not recommended. M. V. Marder St. Thomas More College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
