Autumn 2026: Guilt on Screen

Members:  £190
Non-members: £240
Concessions: £30 (call the office 020 8340 3343)

Please note that this class takes place on the first floor meaning there is unfortunately no step-free access.

Guilt is complex and various. It means one thing to a lawyer, other things to theologians or anthropologists, and a whole host of contradictory things to psychologists. Some disciplines, therefore, seek to pin guilt down with a definition. Within the confines of a particular field, such as some branches of psychology, there may good reason to distinguish guilt from, say, shame. But such simplifying definitions are only valid within specific discourses, not in cultural life as a whole. There, different versions of guilt interact with each other in complex and often confusing ways.

In the nineteenth century guilt normally signified the objective state of having violated a law or principle. But increasingly (as the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary noted in 1900) guilt was often ‘misused for sense of guilt’. Increasingly, guilt divided into two large types: objective and subjective. Another broad division appeared to exist between modern kinds of guilt (mostly tied to evidence and the individual and so, one might hope, ultimately rational) and archaic forms of guilt, which could include things that strike us now as odd or irrational, including the idea of guilt as ritual pollution rather than as the result of specific wrongdoing, and the notion that guilt can be transferred or inflicted, as happens with scapegoating rites. But this division between archaic and modern guilts is more apparent than real. As some whistleblowers today can attest, the scapegoat is not confined to the past. Nor are all the kinds of guilt we deal with rationally explicable as the consequences of an individual’s action or inaction. As Freud argued, sometimes guilt precedes wrongdoing.

Film is good at representing the complexity of life by revealing relations between disparate things, even if in practical life we normally seek to keep them apart. It is invaluable in exposing the complexities of guilt in its many forms. We will explore guilt in a variety of films in different genres from around the world.

Provisional syllabus

1. Massacres
   2012. The Act of Killing, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer et al, Denmark, Indonesia, Norway. UK.
   2013. Nostalgia for the Light, dir. Patricio Guzman, 2010. France, Chile, Germany, Spain, USA
   2014. Katyn, dir. Andrzej Wajda, 2007. Poland.
2. Love and Sexuality
   2000. In the Mood for Love, dir. Wong Kar Wai, 2000. Hong Kong, France.
   2001. Black Narcissus, dir. Powell and Pressburger, 1947. UK.
   2002. The Piano Teacher, dir. Michael Haneke, 2001. France, Austria.
3. Childhood
   1975. Mirror, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975. USSR.
   1976. Fallen Idol, dir. Carol Reed, 1948. UK.
   1977. Capturing the Friedmans, dir. Andrew Jarecki, 2003. USA.
4. Institutions
   1962. The Trial, dir. Orson Welles, 1962. France, Italy, West Germany.
   1963. Carandiru. dir. Hector Babenco, 2003. Brazil, Argentina.
   1964. The Stanford Prison Experiment, dir. Kyle Patrick Alvarez, 2015. USA.