Clément Rosset is a philosopher apart. Nietzschean on his joyful slope, his texts celebrate the approval of reality in the name of opacity of the latter. And from Nietzsche, he also retains the decisive role accorded to music. Now, it is indeed ’music’ that is in question here. To discuss the paradox music represents (bright, clear, joyful, and yet devoid of meaning), the thinker and a young Mexican philosopher apply themselves, in a very eighteenth century way, in a garden, in the midst of the varied beauties that Majorca presents and some bottles of alcohol. But more than just a recorded conversation, however enlightening, it is a case (we can trust in the tact of Jean-Charles Fitoussi) of setting a film to music. A case of bending the logic of editing to other demands than those of a descriptive progression, so that the images and what they convey are presented in all grace, free as trills, without the alibi of discourse, and that the reasoning itself be carried by a rhythm, a melody or a simple aria which detaches it from its sole aim of signifying. As a manifesto for thought, a manifesto for music, but also for the cinema, these three exercises, alleviated from the weight of the learned, are swept along together in the sweet intoxication of a dance like the one with which the film ends. Jean-Charles FITOUSSI
Jean-Pierre Rehm
