The Empty Existential Bench

There are two kinds of movies. Art movies and commercial movies. Art movies require us to think a lot to understand. There is no easily understandable plot, story line etc in art movies. In commercial movies there is always so much melodrama, so much comedy, so much violence, so much romance and a specific number of songs. In art movies there is none of this. We may spend a considerable amount of time watching a scene where all we see is water pouring into the sink from the tap. Or we may see someone just lying down or some inconsequential thing which has no drama whatsoever. Yesterday I saw a bench--an empty bench near some hydrangeas right in the middle of the downtown area. Here was a bustling downtown area of a university town and people are busily walking around but there is no one to sit on the bench. The sight of the empty bench made me think that this could be a scene from an art movie which has no plot and no story line. It made me think of existential philosophy. I googled existential philosophy and the themes of existential philosophy that came up are Existence precedes essence. Absurdity, Nihilism, Condemned to be free, Radical free choice, Lack of meaning in life, Absence of the hand of God.

The empty bench is representative of a bleak outlook on life. The wikipedia definition of existentialism is that it is the search by man for meaning in a meaningless world. The empty bench reminded me of the idea that the bench could be empty because life is meaningless. Or the bench could be empty because instead of sitting everyone is searching for meaning. In any case the empty bench looked very existential to me.