Originally written for an existentialist class. Of course this essay may suffer from over-generalization but the point was to view and dissect the perspective of each character in the movie. I will also say that I Heart Huckabees is kind of a weird film. It’s supposed to be a comedy film but the film has a very heavy emphasis on philosophy with a sprinkle of slapstick funny awkwardness.
While I Heart Huckabees is an extremely weird comedy film, I think it offers a good summarization of certain philosophies and how they encounter existentialism. To quickly summarize I Heart Huckabees, it’s a 2004 comedy film in which an environmentalist Albert hires existentialist detectives because he thinks there a coicidence between Ger and Brad, a Huckabees VP who backstabs Albert to gain control of a forest project. There are many more characters and much more plot but for now I want to get to the perspectives. There are 4 types of people in this movie that encounter existentialism and the questions/reasons of understanding one’s own existence. There is the non-philosopher, the christian, the existentialist, and the nihilist.
A lot of the characters start off as non-philosophers. Brad in the start and Tommy’s wife are examples of these characters. They can be best described as “normal people”. Non-philosophers don’t think about their existence, they don’t think about their actions, they do simply because they can. Encountering or even questioning existence is beyond the non-philosophers’ realm and it either confuses or angers them. Tommy’s wife leaves Tommy because his questions and evidence about the world’s absurdity hit too deep. Related to class material, normal people or nonphilosophers are uncioussness about their own existentences, walls, and barriers set. It’s not bad to be a non-philosopher asit allows to be much more deeply focused on what people consider valuable like Brad’s Mercedes/BMW SUV. Non-philosophers tolerate christians to some extent when it comes to understanding why they exist. Non-philosophers are either confused or angered by Existentialsts and Nihilists.
Then there is the christianity, Ger is adopted by a Christian family and their conflict between the Existentialist Albert and Nihilist Tommy plays an important role. Christianity sounds weird to call it a philosophy since it’s more of a religion or much more theological than philosophical but Christianity still answers the hardest questions that existentialists ask. In fact, religion is the most mainstream definition of explaining one own’s eixstence. For the christian, why they exist is in the realm of god and it’s not really questionable. Christians hate nihilists because of their deeply rooted questioning and bitter/absurd reflection about human nature.
Existentialists play the most important role in the movie. The best way to describe existentialism in the movie is deconstructing everything. This can be noted where Albert is put into a body bag and he has to do mind exercises which help him find the root of his issues or answers. They try to be in the here and now while also having a completely discombobulated mind. The interesting thing about existentialists is that a majority of them are athiests because they aren’t satisfied with the answers that Christianity provides or existentialists want to get deeper into understanding something. When existentialists start to ask questions, observe themselves, and see the world as it really is, the existentialist starts to become conciouss. The battle in existentialism is once you start to become conciouss, what do you do next? If the overbearing pain of existence becomes too much for an existentialist or simply give up trying, they become a nihilist.
Nihilists are like the doomed state of conciouss people, almost like being in hell but worse because they think everything is absurd. It goes without saying that even though Nihilism comes from the school of Existentialism, Existentialists aren’t a fan of Nihilists. The character best represented as a nihilist is Tommy. The answers of nihilism are so blunt, so direct, yet so absurd that it absolutely baffles the non-philosopher and christian. Nihilists definitely aren’t christians either because they look at the bible in such a direct and objective value, that none of the answers make sense. It’s like trying to read a history book as a math book, wrong lens causes the text to be blurry or unreadable/contradictive. From the perspective of the movie, there is either the hypocritical nihilist where they have to tie into human drama in order to feel again only to go back into nothingness. Then there is the ultimate nihilist who is the most dangerous because they believe nothing really does matter and that’s where actions become dangerous like Albert burning Brad’s jetski’s down. Nihilist take pity upon existentialists because they don’t know all the answers.
The views of the existentalist perspectives in the movie is best summarized by Albert in the end. Albert’s quote about the two philosophies issues is that Existentialsts don’t ask enough questions and Nihilism is too dark and inhumane to have right answers. The weirdest part and twist in the movie is that Nihilism and Existentialim work together to try to find the same answer, what is existence and what is the point of exisiting? If you ask the existentialists, they will say everything is connected and the nihilist says nothing matters, the christian says god is the reason of existence and the normal person(non-philosopher) scratches their head.