Über das Leben, die Liebe und den Tod

Eye Filmmuseum presents Ulrich Seidl, Über das Leben, die Liebe und den Tod (On Life, Love and Death), the first exhibition in the Netherlands dedicated to the Austrian filmmaker. Featuring previously unseen and new work, the exhibition confronts visitors with the life stories of seemingly ordinary people. This produces unsettling portraits revealing how people in the modern West survive within a late-capitalist society where meaning has been supplanted by consumerism. Seidl holds up a moral mirror to us. Seidl explains: “I show how people behave in their longing for happiness and love, disappointment, repeated attempts to be loved, and death (…) my main goal is to understand why someone acts in a certain way in his or her world.”

Throughout his work, Seidl explores the condition humaine, the human condition, with a particular interest in everyday life and in those who, for whatever reason, have fallen outside its regulated order. His work is frequently disquieting because it confronts viewers with their own preconceptions about how people live, what they think, how they furnish their homes, how they seek entertainment, and how, in their own way, they search for comfort and belonging.

Seidl aims to create a sense of unease that prompts viewers to question what they see and to re-examine their own moral compass. As he puts it: “I want to destabilize them, because uncertainty raises questions and ideally leads to new insights.” Crucial to Seidl’s deliberate refusal to adopt an ideological position is that he never tells viewers in advance what they should think or how they should respond.

Rejecting today’s tendency towards black-and-white thinking, Seidl seeks to reveal the world’s complexity in all its moral ambiguity, favouring shades of grey over stark oppositions. His films are deliberately and profoundly morally ambiguous.