The Promise and its Ethics

Abstract

I have taken the subject of Ethics in the film The Promise (1996) by the filmmakers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne as a case study in the use of philosophy, in this instance that of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995), and how it can inform all aspects of storytelling. While not the only viable interpretation of the work, Levinas' thought is most relevant to the narrative as well as to the larger intellectual goals of the film. His ethics here is not here merely tacked on intellectualism but is formative of the characters and the story told by the filmmakers, to the point where the film itself becomes a test for the acceptability of the philosophy, akin to a though experiment in film form, something that it at the very end fails to prove. Despite its philosophical and story telling short comings, the Promise is a good showcase of the use of philosophy in filmmaking and where it's successes show the strength of this approach it's failures show the perils of it, something that the Dardenne brothers have shown to have learn from in their subsequent films.