A Spinoza professor undergoes an existential crisis in ‘The Basics of Philosophy’

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

Can we, as human beings, change course, in our lives, in our hearts? Or is our fate sealed from birth, or even before that? For American filmmaker Paul Schrader, who was raised Dutch Calvinist, this is one of life’s animating questions. Some theologians, including the ascetic monk Pelagius, affirm the will’s freedom to choose salvation. Others, like John Calvin himself, preach the doctrine of double predestination: That God consigns some to heaven and others to hell.

In his latest film, The Basics of Philosophy, Schrader interrogates this eternal drama through the eyes of Dr. John Jorissen (Jack Huston), a philosophy professor caught between the future he’s willing himself toward and a past he can’t shake. Employing a simple style, the film commands a dark and complex topic, avoiding easy answers while forcing viewers to grapple with human fallibility.

Jorissen is a handsome, intelligent man with a successful career at a midwestern college. He’s dating psychology professor and single mother Rebecca Richards (Sofia Boutella) while writing a book on the Dutch philosopher and religious heretic Baruch Spinoza. At first glance, his life appears to be in good order. Yet there’s an unease to his character, a palpable melancholy dwelling beneath the composure of his pressed suits and slicked back hair.

Jorissen is all but estranged from his wealthy father Melvin (Bill Pullman), who passes away during the film’s first act. We soon learn the reason behind their strained relationship: Years ago, Jorissen sexually assaulted one of his male piano students, and Melvin paid off the family to prevent word from getting out. While speaking in church at his father’s funeral, he spots his former student Miguel Vasque (Daniel Zovatto) in the pews, now a moustached young man with a successful real estate company. The encounter brings Jorissen’s torment about both his deed and his sexuality to a head.

Visually, the film is pedestrian. It’s shot in digital with straightforward cinematography. Tension is depicted with low-effort slow zooms, and the lighting alternates between stark and gray, save for the sex scenes, which — take it or leave it — are neon. Compared with the film-stock richness and painterly frame of something like Schrader’s Hardcore (1979), it’s not much of a looker. Less a defense than an observation, it matches the colorless mood of its protagonist, who mumbles a halfhearted marriage proposal to Rebecca (“I have a ring”) even as he ships himself Nembutal from the dark web.

To be or not to be? This is Jorissen’s burning question. Quoting the Roman stoic philosopher and statesman Seneca, he tells his students, “Dying well escapes the risk of living badly.” For someone in anguish, it’s a compelling proposition. He tries to reassure himself that “hope is practical” and “forgiveness is possible.” Yet you get the sense he isn’t convinced by his words.

Seeking guidance, Jorissen consults an imaginary Spinoza (Karl Glusman), costumed in a full scholar’s gown and flat linen collar. In an oddly moving scene, set to a dreamy light ambient drone, the two stroll through the park discussing the possibility of change. Spinoza’s magnum opus Ethics famously declares, “There is no such thing as absolute (that is free) will.” In his model of the universe, everything stems from a single source in an unbroken chain of cause and effect. The best we can do as mere dominoes is recognize this truth, liberating ourselves from turbulent emotions by accepting that we lack control over most outcomes.

Food for thought, but hardly a salve for a man in crisis. Jorissen is not after knowledge but absolution. Confronting Miguel in the film’s climactic scene, he laments, “I have changed but I have not been forgiven.” Absent this, he desires death. But Miguel refuses to oblige him, knocking his suicide cocktail out of his hands before punching him in the face and telling him to go home. It’s an abrupt tonal shift reminiscent of Ethan Hawke’s self-mortification in First Reformed (2017), and like the latter, doesn’t quite follow.

It does, however, give Jorissen a second chance, of which he avails himself — entering into holy matrimony. Has he really changed? Or is he just deluding himself? Schrader’s decision to linger on Rebecca’s son as the marriage officiant intones, “You may now kiss the bride,” makes for an uncomfortable open ending. With a compact runtime and restrained camerawork, the 80-year-old writer/director achieves a dense and lurid study of some of the human condition’s heaviest themes. And all while suspending moral judgment. Given his religious upbringing, I imagine he leaves that to God.