Stillness of Solitude

Michelle Devereaux is a film journalist and scholar. She received her doctorate in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh and has taught film theory, history and criticism at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Birmingham. She is a board member of intersectional feminist journal on visual culture MAI and currently lives in British Columbia, Canada.

In this intricately argued and elegantly written book, Michelle Devereaux offers an inventive, original take on American independent film, arguing that works by Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze exemplify “neoromanticism”. [...] The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American Independent Film will serve as a valuable resource for researchers interested in the filmmakers she highlights, for each chapter offers a stand-alone analysis of one director’s film.

• Introduction: Filmmaking as Romantic Quest What is ‘Romantic’? Imagination and the Romantic Sensibility Romanticism, Sincerity and Authenticity: A Problem of Identity ‘Metamodernism’ and Romantic Irony From the New Wave to New Hollywood to Now Chapter Overviews Part I. Romantic Clarity and Confusion 1. Beauty Among the Ruins: The Painful Picturesque and Sentimental Sublime in Wes Anderson’s AestheticsThe Sublime and the Beautiful in Eighteenth-century AestheticsThe Royal Tenenbaums and the Painful Picturesque Trapped in a Never-ending Play: Anderson’s Use of Diegetic Space A Search for Meaning Within Postmodern Pastiche The Middle-aged Man and the Sea: The Life Aquatic and the Sentimental Sublime The Camp Cathedral: Eclecticism in Anderson’s Mise-en-scène and Dialogue Conclusion 2. ‘An Endless Succession of Mirrors’: Irony, Ambiguity and the Crisis of Authenticity in Synecdoche, New York Romantic Irony: From Kant and Schlegel to Byron and Beyond Embracing Irony and Undermining Realism in Synecdoche, New York ‘A Series of Mad Visions Perhaps’: The Screen as the Site of Confused SubjectivityThe Mise en Abyme and the Mathematical Sublime Conclusion Part II. Emotion, Imagination and the Feminine Sublime3. ‘Oh! You Pretty Things: The Egotistical and Feminine Sublimes in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin SuicidesGendered Expressions of Sublimity: The Egotistical and Feminine Sublimes Staging Sublimity in Seventies Suburbia Mood Creation and the ‘Emotional Core’ of the Film The Aesthetics and Politics of ‘Pretty’ ‘Preparing to Give Assault’: Creating the ‘Pseudo-political’ gothic Conclusion 4. Girlfriend in the Machine: Intersubjectivity and the Sublime Limits of Representation in Spike Jonze’s HerThe Role of Will in the Romantic Imagination Sublime Obscurity and the Mind’s EyePhotographing Sound in a Disembodied Mise-en-scène ‘The Light of Sense Goes Out’: Intersubjectivity and the Acknowledgment of Others Conclusion Part III. Childhood, (R)evolution and Imaginary History5. ‘Because I’m a Wild Animal’ : Nature Versus Nurture in Fantastic Mr Fox Romantic Conceptions of Childhood and Nature Digging for the Middle Ground: Fantastic Mr Fox and American Pastoralism‘A Native Blend of Myth and Reality’: The Landscape of Imagination Little Savages in the Garden: Ash, Kristofferson and the Romantic ChildMourning the Loss of Animal Nature Conclusion 6. ‘It’s Not Too Much, Is It?’ Keats, Fancy and the Ethics of Pleasurable Excess in Marie Antoinette Fancy and Material Excess as Alternative Romantic Discourse Marie Antoinette and the ‘Material Sublime’ The ‘Romantic Ethic, Daydreaming and Modern Consumption Revolution, Modernity and Shifting Personal Identities‘Like a Little Piece of Cake’: The Body, Consumption and Moral Utility ‘Dying into Life’: Embracing the Romantic Depth Model? Conclusion Conclusion: On Endings and New Beginnings The Romantic Relationship to Reality: A Questioning of Absolutes The Battle Between Self-consciousness and Solipsism ‘Bravery in the Midst of Indeterminacy’: Emotion as a Form of Revolution List of Works Cited Index