To a greater or less extent, we are all solipsists. We live our lives trapped in a prison of pure subjectivity, profoundly alienated not only from the real world but from the subjective experiences of other people. We assume that people think like us and that the external world is out there for us to perceive and interact with but we don’t know. Not in the same way that we know whether or not we are thinking or feeling pain. We infer, we assume, we project, we deduce, but we do not know. That which is out there is not as real as that which is in here. We all possess this instinct. An instinct that has inspired countless philosophical schools from classical scepticism through empiricism and the the socialised idealism of post-modernity. It also explains why the dominant currency of the humanities is phenomenological; feelings, emotions, beliefs and the self. To creative people in thrall to the solipsistic instinct, these mental constructs seem far more real and far more accessible than facts about the real world and so they are accorded more importance. An excellent example of the privileged position of the phenomenological is the form of the autobiography.
Most autobiographies do not try to invoke impersonal forces or neurological causality in their attempts to explain the author’s decisions or apparent personality quirks. Instead, most autobiographies are stories. Stories in which the author is the protagonist while the real people they encountered in their life become extras, side-kicks, love-interests and villains. These are the kinds of stories that we all tell ourselves when we think about our place in the world.
Jean-Francois Richet’s L’Instinct de Mort (2008) is perhaps the most formally honest screen adaptation of an autobiography you are ever likely to see. The film’s representation of the life of famed French criminal Jacques Mesrine fully embraces the solipsism of both the autobiography and its psychopathic protagonist by showing us a world in which Mesrine is the hero while everyone else is just set dressing.
Ruthless Culture 