The Nietzschean Free Spirit in Dead Poets Society and Harold and Maude

Abstract

The various films discussed in the preceding chapters demonstrate existentialist concepts in ways that show both what the existentialists get right about their description of the human condition and what they have missed or failed to take fully into account. What they seem to have missed most is the impact of the social world and life circum-stances on the emergence of a free, authentic self. This is a criticism of existentialism in general that has occurred frequently in theoretical literature, though usually the outcome of those critiques is to set aside existentialism in favor of a different approach altogether.¹ I have attempted to show that there remains something vital and compelling about concepts such as freedom, bad faith, authenticity, and the like despite the fact that achieving the ideal existentialist perspective may be more complicated by social context than some of the existentialist writers are willing to admit. For this final analysis of film and existentialism, I will turn to Nietzsche’s concept of the free spirit, because it offers a perspective on freedom that does acknowledge the limitations discussed in preceding chapters while still advocating a form of freedom that is substantive and likely to be the source of meaning in a world of contingent values.