About

"I have much of Ludwig in me. Not in my work, but in my life. My film does not portray or betray Ludwig. It is there to open up. It is logic."
Derek Jarman, Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagelton Script, The Derek Jarman Film (1993)

"I want to convey some of the fun of my life and less of the doom and gloom. The balance I have achieved in Wittgensteinmuch more clearly reflects my situation that Edward II or, for that case, Caravaggio – if torture crept into my life it was with the HIV and nowhere else."
Derek Jarman, Smiling in Slow Motion (2000)

The eccentric life of Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is given a fantastical treatment in Derek Jarman's final narrative film. The prodigy of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family and protégé to British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein's writing covered the foundations of logic, and the philosophies of mathematics and language. Commissioned by writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali who was producing a series of productions about the life and ideas of key philosophers for television, the film is based on an original script by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton. After the film's release Eagleton would publicly discredit Jarman's adaptation, citing: "My own script strikes me as reasonably strong on ideas but short on dramatic action; Jarman's, minus my own interpolations, seems to me just the other way around." InSmiling in Slow Motion (2000) Jarman wrote of Eagleton: "In all my life I have never met such uncouth and surly bad manners."

Wittgenstein cuts between by the young Wittgenstein (Clancy Chassay) grappling with the principles of philosophy with a luminescent green Martian (Nabil Shaban), and the adult Wittgenstein (Karl Johnson) who is caught up in great personal torment concerning his homosexuality and struggling with self-doubt as he moves amongst the intellectual and social circles of Cambridge. Sponsored by Russell (Michael Gough) and Lady Ottoline Morrell (Tilda Swinton), Wittgenstein enlists in the Austro-Hungarian army and insists on fighting in WWI, hopeful that facing the prospect of death will give meaning to his life. After building a house with his own hands in Norway, he yearns to take up manual labour in the Soviet Union and teaches logic to country school children before taking up an appointment at Trinity College. He would only publish one short volume in his lifetime - Tractus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) completed while a prisoner-of-war. In Jarman's retelling, Wittgenstein's known lovers (notably David Pinsent, Francis Skinner, and Ben Richards) are combined into the single figure of philosophy student Johnny, played by Jarman's real-life partner Kevin Collins.

Jarman's film sketches out episodes from Wittgenstein's restless life in a series of theatrical vignettes that take place on an empty soundstage with minimal props. Accepting the challenges of the project's minimal budget (£300,000), Jarman's emphasis isn't historical realism, but an evocation of the thinking process and the internal dilemmas faced by Wittgenstein. Primary colours play an important role in the production design as Jarman was losing his eyesight as a result of HIV-related conditions.