Sick to Death Double Bill [electronic resource].

Full Unemployment Cinema 2011

Open access content

Riget / The Kingdom – First Episode – Day 1: “Den hvide flok” / “The Unheavenly Host”(1994) By Lars von Trier Denmark (60mins) Moartea domnului Lazarescu / The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) By Cristi Puiu and Razvan Radulescu Romania (150min) The process by which Mr Dante Remus Lazarescu becomes neglected, is also that by which the film connects him to a dying potentiality which could only be realised through him. This flickering potential, a shadow in his shape, a shadow that is the image-object to which the care of others might be attached, and which has hitherto only appeared within a set of relations defined by his insignificance, is both realised by the film and closed out unrealised by the institution which it portrays. Biopower forecloses on all discourses of redemption and seeks instead to realise, or manufacture, the tangible potentials which it identifies in individuals. Where no useful, achievable, measurable potential is identified its institutions find no purpose, nothing to work on – the shadow, the potential that is care for care’s sake, is dispersed. Mr Lazarescu’s lonely fate is also the fate of the potential that is his alone and which he might have realised in a life lived otherwise. At the end of his life he carries his shadow down into the void. And a potential for society, with him as one of its centres, an alternative circumstance structured on other relations, and other procedures, other means of caring and prioritising, dies with him…
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Biopolitics
Motion pictures

Text

Full Unemployment Cinema
Lars von Trier
Cristi Puiu
Razvan Radulescu
David Moats
Mark Cousins
Frére Dupont
Bertolt Brecht