"Energy is Eternal Delight" William Blake A still from Nikita Mikhalkov's 1980 film adaptation of Oblomov I Oblomov, the eponymous anti-hero of Ivan Goncharov’s 1859 satirical novel, is the living embodiment of inertia. He's widely considered to be the epitome of the ‘superfluous man’ of Russian literature of the 1840s and 1850s, but has none of the Byronism, glamour, or elegance of Turgenev’s Bazarov or Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin . A man in his thirties liv

A reappraisal of Louis Malle's 1963 film The Fire Within and its source nove, and how the film relates to various philosopies of sucide, in particular those of Schopenhauer and EM Cioran. Also discusses henri Bresson's 1964 movie Mouchette.