An Encounter with Simone Weil

How do we deal with someone else's suffering? The French philosopher Simone Weil dedicated her life to this moral question, not to mention her death. During World War II, she stopped eating anything more than the rations her countrymen back in France had to survive with. She was only 34 when she died in Great Britain in 1943. Filmmaker Julia Haslett is fascinated by Weil's intellectual legacy and life story. She makes an attempt to penetrate the essence of Weil's thought processes, in the hope of gaining personal enlightenment: Haslett's father committed suicide, and her brother struggles with depression. The film is a respectful homage to the relatively unknown philosopher, but it functions primarily as a chronicle of Haslett's own quest. The atmospheric music, the philosophical voice-over, and the experiment in which an actress portrays Weil and talks to Haslett all stress the filmmaker's need to fathom this woman - not to mention to cope with the powerlessness she feels in the face of her father and brother. Haslett sees Weil, who wanted to experience others' suffering firsthand, as a morally superior example. The question in the film is if her philosophical insights ultimately offer the key to genuine compassion.