The movie The Oxford Murders is adapted from the novel Los Crimenes De Oxford , we can find many elements in this movie: philosophy, mathematics, human nature, love and so on. Though there are few blemish in the movie and some plots are too artificial, it is still an excellent movie about which one can think deeply. I did some plain investigations about the movie from the perspective of philosophy.
The movie begins with the speech of the professor Sheldom. In his speech, he claims that "there is no way of finding a single absolute truth, an irrefutable argument that might help to answer the question of mankind. " Then, our protagonist, Martin stands up and rejects "The essence of nature is mathematical, there is a hiding meaning beneath reality. Things are organized following a model, a scheme, a logical series." Now, the question runs through the movie is raised---Is everything in the world governed by logic? This is a problem needs infinite investigation, or to say, this is a problem no one could work out. If your answer is yes, then tell me where is your logic on this issue form; if your answer is no,show me where can your reason comes from without logic? But the emphasis in the movie is not to give us an answer, the importance for a movie is to lead us to ponder, by the attractive plot and ingenious scenes. That's why the movie is called" murder" but not "investigation". So, let's see the dead bodies sacrificed for philosophy.
Old lady, circle; Old man, fish; orchestra player, triangle, and ten innocent children, tetraktys.
The professor invented a series of killings to hide the only real crime: Beth killed her mother. He uses Martin's theory to link invented the serial murders to logical series, and deceived everyone.
According to the " Wittgenstein's paradox concerning finite rules ", every logical series can be followed by any figure. We can know what's the next one would be, but before that we need an infinitely more difficult and complex calculation. In fact, in the first beginning, the professor raised the " Butterfly theory" : ".... The butterfly fluttered it's wings and causes a hurricane on the other side of the world. But we have predicted a single hurricane?--- Nobody! ". So we know nothing about the world, there is no absolute truth. So I think the movie is telling us that, we are determined, we are governed by logical, BUT we never know how we are determined, in what kind of way we are governed. There are grooves etched in our minds, we are following the path,but we can never know how the grooves function.
From another point, how the murder series totally fabricated by the professor can conceived everyone? Sheldom deliberately leads Martin and others to follow his way. Here in the movie, the logical leader is Sheldom, then in our daily lives, who is the leader behind to force us believe what we see, what we hear, what we experience? Can we believe our thoughts?
We have no doubts that the world is as the same as what we see, because we cannot imagine anything we've never experienced. Thus, we are just witting and unconscious to fall into the hands of our "leader ". Just like Martin, he believes in mathematical principle, we believe in our minds. We are governed by the logic insert in our brain from the day we are born. We are controlled in thoughts. Our whole conceptual system is based on principles we even don't know where they are wrong or true. True? Wrong? What the standard to depend? No one can evaluate anything putting aside every values, and values are governed by logic, logic is inaccessible...
Nietzsche expected the superman to reevaluate the values, "will to power" is the basic human drive. David Hume claims that we know little about the word as our beliefs based on cause and effect are unwarranted. Wittgenstein writes that there is no absolute truth. And his teacher, Russell alarms us that the appearance is not reality...
In the end of the movie, they professor says" we have an absolute truth, that everything is fake. "
We are fearful about the incomprehensive, illogical, random world . That's why we invented logic, we try to persuade ourselves to accept the uncertain world.
Tractatus is the biggest lie.
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