The 18 Best Philosophical Movies of All Time

By Taste of Cinema

Whether realizing the art form of filmmaking or not, directors and writers often use their preferred visual medium to tell a story. Ideologies, theories or whatever form of message is always decoded in this visual medium in hopes that the audience gets the message. The secret of making a successful film, especially when telling a story, is to avoid preaching.

From Mel Gibson to Seth Macfarlene, Federico Fellini to Ridley Scott and of course Hitchcock, their movies have messages, from symbolist storytelling to clever subtext dialogues. Here’s a list of some of the movies that have philosophical messages encoded for the audience. Please note that the films here are ranked in chronological order.

1. Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)

Hitchcock, the master of suspense, toys with his audience, repels and lures them to a world of shock. Rope is one of his most audacious films ever, purposely created as a one-shot film: an experiment in real-time.

Starring in this underrated classic are James Stewart, Farley Granger and John Dall. It contains the most unique filmmaking of its time and the view of superior and inferior human beings. The film is based on the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case, the story of two homosexual law students in Chicago who murdered a 14 year old boy for kicks to prove they were intelligent and could get away with it.

This is an anti-existentialist movie, and James Stewart discovers to his horror that, following existentialism principles, two of his students have killed their classmate. James Stewart at the end realizes that depending on this philosophy only produces suffering for the follower and the people around him. This movie brings up references to the Nietzsche philosophy “Ubermensch,” as well as containing Freudian allusions.

2. The Fountainhead (1949, King Vidor)

This is an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel, a melodrama about individualism, shot in a fascinating German Expressionist style. Starring Gary Cooper as an independent architect who struggles to maintain his integrity, this movie portrays a metaphysical statement, an aesthetic manifesto, and a commentary on American architecture, ethics and political principles.

A lot of charm comes from the talented characters attempting to do their best with corny dialogue and occasionally giving the best performances. Gail Wynard, played by Raymond Massey, is a compelling character in the story due to the transformations he goes through during the film. Meanwhile, Gary Cooper as Roark is a tool, an egotistical man that has trouble conforming to popular standards.

3. The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman)

Director Ingmar Bergman, known for films Persona, Wild Strawberries and Fanny & Alexander, made The Seventh Seal, a cinematic model of existentialism, a man’s apocalyptic search for meaning. This extraordinary tale is about a knight who challenges Death to a fateful game of chess.

Although this movie is about understanding themselves in terms of metaphysical and philosophical questions, the Swedish director also wants the audience to experience this film with the issues of the problem of evil, philosophy of religion and existentialism. Bergman illustrates Bloch’s trouble with his beliefs incredibly well, the existence of an omnipotent God in the world, for his audience to view and judge for themselves.

This movie invites a lot of questions; it doesn’t sermonize nor belittle any specific demographic. Instead, it just states differerent opinion and lets the audience discuss it.

4. La Dolce Vita (1960, Federico Fellini)

Directed by Federico Fellini who’s known for movies such as 8 ½, Amarcord, Roma and Satyricon, La Dolce Vita possess a dark and frequent sense of humor about the lavish lifestyles of people in Rome.

This film stars Marcello Mastroianni as a gossip journalist, who is unable to decide what to do next and feels as if he is trapped in a box. This movie feels as though Fellini is attempting to communicate with his audience about the seven deadly sins, which happens during seven deranged nights and seven dawns.

The whole movie takes place between the Seven Hills of Rome, in streets of nightclubs and on the sidewalks of cafes. If you can’t really picture it, close your eyes and think of Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night. There are few movies that can give the viewers a grasp of philosophy, life and death every time at a different timeline as you watch the movie, but one of them is La Dolce Vita. There may be no such thing as the good life, but the choice you make in your life will determine it.

5. My Night at Maud’s (1969, Eric Rohmer)

Directed by Eric Rohmer, this is a story about a young engineer (Jean) who spies an attractive blonde woman and, most importantly, a practicing catholic. But this entire mission is put on hold when he bumps into his friend (Pascal), who spends the entire evening discussing religion and philosophy.

They both agree to meet up the next day to continue the discussion at Maud’s house. During the discussions, Pascal made a wager, giving enormous odds against the existence of God at the ratio of 100 to 1. They all must bet on that one chance. If GOD doesn’t exist, then they lose the bet, though the loss is insignificant to them. But if GOD exists, then their lives have meaning and the reward is to live eternal.

The characters in this movie are intelligent, confident, communicative, masters of deceptions and capable of self-deception.

6. Love and Death (1975, Woody Allen)

Considered a satire of everything about Russians, from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Sergei Eisenstein films, Woody Allen has managed to mix his Kafkian anxiety and Kierkegaard’s fearfulness into a nonstop comedy on war and peace, crime and punishment, and fathers and sons.

Allen plays Boris, who couldn’t sleep without the lights on until he reached thirty. He is about to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit. Throughout the movie, Allen spits out certain gags across the spectrum from other forms of visual mediums, such as Persona as a stylized parody, one-liners from Attila the Hun, and so on.

Though at the end Allen pitches us about love and death, what he as a human has learned about life, that our mind is great but the body has all the fun, we think God is an underachiever, but that death is somewhat a downer. This reminds us of Matthew 20:16, “So the last shall be first, and the first shall be the last.”

7. Being There (1979, Hal Ashby)

Being There is an adaptation of the 1970 novel by Jerzy Kosinski. Peter Sellers plays a simple gardener, who has never left the estate until his employer (Ben) dies. Things really get interesting when it comes to Ben’s funeral. The President and other political kingmakers are discussing the next choice for President and Chauncey’s (Peter Sellers) name becomes their favorite.

This movie embraces the moral and intellectual consequences of television’s presence, and in this regard does not mortally offend an audience weaned on television.

Showing something funny while somehow never misplacing the seriousness of the film or portraying the humanity of the characters is just one aspect of Hal Ashby’s flair. He had made great films such as Harold & Maude and The Last Detail, but this is a satirical comedy film and it will leave you with a lot of inspiration and ideas about philosophy coined by Heidegger.

8. My Dinner with Andre (1981, Louis Malle)

Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn starred and also wrote the script for this movie, which is about two men having dinner in a fancy restaurant and discussing life. Yes, that’s the entire plot. Even for a minimalist plot, surely their conversations are highly thought-provoking topics.

Mainly this debate is about between Andre’s spiritualistic and idealistic worldview and Wallace’s pragmatic humanism and his practical-realistic worldview. Andre and Wallace are two different men, one eccentric and the other a settled type.

This movie is considered to be a cult classic among independent cinema critics and filmmakers for its philosophical meaning and minimalist style due to its insightful talks about life, the human condition, religion and communication. The beauty of this movie is that both are right and wrong at the same time.

After further the conversations, Andre and Wallace have become involved personally and emotionally, communicating on a level that is beyond most forms of socialization. This film shows the most truthful depiction of human communication in a visual medium.

9. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)

Blade Runner is a feature film based on the science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep? Harrison Ford features as one of the Blade Runners hired to “Terminate” (Retirement) the Replicants, an enslaved human-engineered robot created by Tyrell Corporation’s genetic engineers. They were designed to serve as slave labor for exploring and colonizing other planets.

The movie portrays what it means to be human in the cybernetics era, raising questions such as: if artificial intelligence were placed in a body that looked and acted human, would it be considered a human? Would androids differ in any important way from the humans who created them? Existentialism!

10. Barton Fink (1991, The Coen Brothers)

Directed and written by Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers who made remarkable films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men and Blood Simple, they use film as a visual medium to tell Barton Fink’s story that strongly depicts his life consumed by pride of his art which gets destroyed as soon as he enters the Hollywood playground.

The film portrayed Fink as an impotent intellectual man who sells himself out while telling himself he is doing the right thing. Sometimes we don’t know we are in the midst of a seduction by the fascism of daily life. Thus this movie largely presents itself as a metaphor for heaven and hell.

11. The Addiction (1995, Abel Ferrara)

Kathleen, a college philosophy grad, wanders around New York City. One night she was ambushed by a female vampire, who also challenged Kathleen to beg for her life by saying, “Tell me to go away. Don’t plead with me; just tell me to go away, like you mean it.”

However, Kathleen wanted to get bitten and infected. She wanted to be a vampire. Now with her new lifestyle, being both sick and traumatized, she now craves human blood and wanders around the city. She begins to consciously ask questions about the importance of humanity.

She has thoughts such as philosophy has no purpose, that the histories of mankind are nothing more than a mask to hide human weakness and chaos. The civilization that we know of is nothing but a pile of unburied dead bodies built upon the deceased bodies consumed by war. Abel Ferrara created one of the most entertaining, edgy and interesting moral films, which also happens to be a vampire movie.

12. The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)

The Truman Show stars Jim Carrey as the main character. Everything about Truman is fake. His relationships, work, and his life was displayed for millions of TV viewers. What is real? This film is a reference to the thoughts of the great philosophers from Descartes to Sartre, Schopenhaur to Plato.

The Truman Show is an exceedingly disturbing movie, monitored by at least 5,000 cameras, broadcasting straight to the audience, available 24/7. It is as if we are the God who created Mr. Truman, watching him, following him and everything else he does, and unfortunately he doesn’t even know that he is the main cogwheel of his own world. This brings us to the topic, should God be allowed to be immoral or should he be bound by morality and ethics?

This is a psychological experiment for the audience to decide and debate. This also lures the audience into the capability of asking the question, do we have to obey his commandments heedlessly or do we ignore and exercise our own judgments? Then if we do ignore and exercise our own law, are we being wrongful? Will there be consequences for those actions? It is a sophisticated film but it gives the audience a ride to be the judge of social behavioral for this adventure.

13. The Matrix (1999, The Wachowskis)

Keanu Reeves is well-known for the role of Neo in The Matrix. He plays a computer programmer by day and a hacker by night. Neo’s life changes after receiving an enigmatic message on his computer when he begins searching for a man named Morpheus. Meeting this ambiguous man, eventually Neo learns that reality is actually very different from what he and most other people perceive it to be.

This movie contains a great deal of religious and philosophical theories, which have been brought up by many philosophers, and it is still being viewed and studied today in the academic world. Plato’s idea of what we see in this world is a mere shadow of what truly exists, and that we have not seen what the world really is via our eyes. W.E.B. Dubois’ concepts of the double consciousness are being discussed, along with Descartes’ ability to think for oneself.

So, what is reality? Bear in mind there are no malicious forces deceiving us about the nature of reality. It is about our senses and thoughts, which deceive us. By providing a limited amount of message on what we have, it could alter or change our perception of reality based upon the variance that was given. From that information we will probably end up constructing models of the world. Our brain is pretty petrifying, isn’t it?

14. Memento (2000, Christopher Nolan)

Christopher Nolan’s feature film Memento is an adaptation of a short story by Jonathan Nolan, “Memento Mori.”. Memento is a thought-provoking neo-noir psychological thriller film told in reverse and challenging in itself just to watch due to its non-linear, backwards narrative structure.

Nolan wants his audience to be part of Leonard’s life. Hence we are witnessing everything from an amnesia sufferer and ex-insurance investigator whom also investigated the brutal and cold-blooded rape and murder of his wife in a burglary, which caused him the amnesia due to a blow to his skull.

This movie visits the memory, perception, grief, self-deception and revenge of human a behavior, which talks about the importance of the body, being a self, a practical sense of time. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a philosopher, asked once, “A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow?” This is definitely an ambiguous film and it is disturbing, as the movie ends, “Is this the end of Leonard or is there going to be another Memento?”

15. Waking Life (2001, Richard Linklater)

If you remember A Scanner Darkly, then you are in for another bizarre rotoscope animation technique movie. Director Richard Linklater takes us on an extraordinary journey about a nameless man who finds himself trapped in a series of continuous dreams. Linklater also wants the audience to challenge themselves to combine their rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of their dreams, as if it’s an inception, but not exactly like Inception by Nolan.

However, the film is about an expression of a personal philosophy. It’s mainly about Linklater’s influences from his friends and thoughts, as if we are on his boat and he’s the captain of it, guiding us into his perceptive world. Interweaving within his voice, the plot of this movie is about Wiley Wiggins, who travels through various stages of dreams.

You may want to watch this film multiple times due to its high intensity and the details of the dream sequences, which brings about a new phase of concepts and ideas. This movie leaps into a lot of philosophies: Buddhism, existentialists and more. Keep in mind every scene in this movie has its own message and every time you watch it you gain a new perspective.

16. I Heart Huckabees (2004, David O’Russell)

This is a movie about existentialism and the meaning of life, and stars Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Jude Law and Lily Tomlin. I Heart Huckabees examines the philosophical debates between individualism and the inner connection of an individual toward the environment, idealism and success. But hold on, we are not done yet.

The movie is also littered with references to an array of philosophical and artistic ideas, from Sartre to Freudian to surrealism, though David O’Russell admitted that this movie was predominantly influenced by Zen Buddhism when he encountered Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Robert Thurman. So where do we stand here, which philosophy really holds the movie?

Infinite thoughts versus pain and suffering in life, although at the end Albert discovers that something else precedes them, which he realizes he can reverse the psychology of his thoughts about his archenemy by looking at the person as one who is suffering and looking for meaning just as he is. This is to the point that one understands being one of compassion, which answers Zen Buddhism.

17. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)

Directed by Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine is a romantic comedy drama movie starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. It’s written by Charlie Kauffman, who’s behind breathtaking films such as Adaptation, Synecdoche, New York and Being John Malkovich. The couple undergoes anomalous procedures to erase each other’s memories after a fight only to find out they have been into this point of life before.

It’s deep, personal, and rich, yet fragile when things go wrong. Michel Gondry cleverly explores the memory, relationships, loss and the connections between these two souls. This film is one of the best films to have the right blend of romance, originality and surrealism.

18. The Fountain (2006, Darren Aronofsky)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the man behind films such as Black Swan, PI, and Requiem for Dreams, The Fountain is a movie about spirituality and immortality, life and death, abiding love, the tree of life and the fountain of youth. This is quite a complex story and eventually holds up well over time.

Hugh Jackman plays Tommy, who is doing an experimental surgery on monkeys, hoping to find a cure for his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz). In between that story, another story emerges, in which Hugh is a Spanish conquistador who is sent by Rachel to find the biblical Tree of Life whose sap brings immortality.

Then in another story it places Hugh as an astronaut floating in space with The Tree of Life. He believes Izzi is part of the tree and once he reaches Xibalba Nebula, seen by the Mayans as an underworld, he will be reunited with her.

Scientist, warrior and an explorer, all three stories bring together Hugh Jackman’s character, who refuses to see death as anything but an enemy he must defeat. In each story he misses the love that was set in front of him but he pushes away and insists on trying to achieve miracles.

Honorable Mentions: The Stranger by Luchino Visconti, Inception by Christopher Nolan, A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick, Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky, Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, Lake of Fire by Tony Kaye, Cartesius by Roberto Rossellini, The Shawshank Redemption by Frank Darabont and 12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet.

Author Bio: Vinnoth Ira Krish is a Filmmaker and Raconteur for Opsoclo Films & Cinema 48. Currently residing in Lincoln, NE making documentaries for Vision Maker Media and NET Nebraska. Just like any other moviegoer, he watch movies, writes stories and wields stories for his audience. You can find him at twitter: https://twitter.com/IraOpsoclo.

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