Drawing on Jean-Paul Sartre's concepts of being-in-itself and being-for-itself, this article examines how war reduces soldiers to cogs in a war machine and transforms individuals into soldiers whose sole function is to fight, thereby reducing them from what Sartre terms free beings-for-themselves to limited beings-in-themselves. However, despite such attempts to impose constraints on human freedom, individuals can still exercise their freedom through acts of choice. I will examine two films set during World War I, Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard, 1932) and Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), to explore the problem of radical freedom in existentialism. This article ultimately suggests that Sartre's existentialism enables a reading of war films that recognises that individuals assert their freedom and shape themselves even under the most constraining circumstances.
In this article I consider the films of Whit Stillman through the lens of existentialism to highlight ideas around freedom in contemporary society. I concentrate on the films of the Doomed Bourgeois in Love trilogy, Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998) to show that these films offer us sympathetic understanding of a privileged class who struggle with questions of purpose, identity and absurdity in a world that seems to have no meaning. Jean-Paul Sartre's conception of nothingness underwrites the possibility of radical freedom and Stillman's films show how such freedom might look in the real world. I also offer a novel way of considering the difference between Sartre and Albert Camus's conceptions of the absurd.
This article explores how the film Mr. Nobody (2009), directed by Jaco Van Dormael, illustrates key concepts of Sartrean existentialism. The film exemplifies an existential condition through the character of Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto), whose life unfolds across multiple possible futures. His indecision and avoidance of choice reveal existential anguish and bad faith. The film's structure, which fragments time and narrative, mirrors the weight of responsibility inherent in every decision. Through detailed examination of key scenes and choices, I argue that the film not only illustrates Sartrean thought but also deepens it by dramatizing philosophical dilemmas in a concrete, affective form. Ultimately, Mr. Nobody affirms that freedom, though distressing, is inescapable and constitutive of human existence.
