Untimely Reflections #4: At the Movies! Reviewing, “When Nietzsche Wept” (2007) Featuring, my wife.

This is the twentieth episode of the podcast! Maybe the smallest of milestones, but we decided to celebrate. It's a bit unusual for me to do two Untimely Reflections in a row, but hopefully it'll be as fun for everyone else as it was for me. Today, I'm sitting down with my wife Amberly to talk about a movie we just watched, "When Nietzsche Wept" by director Pinchas Perry. Amberly knows very little about philosophy or Nietzsche, but knows a lot about movies, and especially what makes something a bad movie. Well, she's going to need those skills, because this film was disappointing in almost every respect. Based on a book by Irvin Yalom, the film unfortunately repeats a lot of myths about Nietzsche, some of underlay his entire portrayal in the story, and Nietzsche is mostly sidelined in lieu of Dr. Breuer, whose midlife crisis is the central narrative of the film. It really made me wish for a good film adaptation of Nietzsche's life.  We'll return to our regularly scheduled lecture series next week. Special thanks to Amberly for being willing to watch this long-winded and tortured film with me, which, in her words, "has the production value of a Wishbone historical recreation!"