The stillness of solitude : romanticism and contemporary American independent film / Michelle Devereaux

"In the first book-length study of Romanticism in relation to American film, Michelle Devereaux takes established theories of contemporary American independent cinema as a point of entry, exploring the underlying philosophical and aesthetic Romantic connections between a selection of seven films from four popular filmmakers: Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman. Primarily dealing with questions of identity, imagination and the relation between self and world, these films also emphasise the anxieties of our own time: the nostalgia for an imaginary past, and the fear of an uncertain future."-- Provided by publisher

Includes bibliographical references and index

Beauty among the ruins : The painful picturesque and sentimental sublime in Wes Anderson's aesthetics -- "An endless succession of mirrors" : Irony, ambiguity and the crisis of authenticity in Synecdoche, New York -- Oh! You pretty things : The egotistical and feminine sublimes in Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides -- Girlfriend in the machine : Intersubjectivity and the sublime limits of representation in Spike Jonze's Her -- "Because I'm a wild animal" : Nature versus nurture in Fantastic Mr Fox -- "It's not too much, is it?" : Keats, fancy and the ethics of pleasurable excess in Marie Antoinette -- Conclusion : On endings and new beginnings

Michelle Devereaux is a film journalist and scholar. She received her doctorate in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh and has taught film theory, history and criticism at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Birmingham. She is a board member of intersectional feminist journal on visual culture MAI and currently lives in British Columbia, Canada.

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