The Seducer’s Diary

A Film Summary

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)–eccentric, provocative, “Father of Existentialism”– continues to infiltrate and challenge contemporary culture—from religion to literature, from drama and film, to psychology and music.

The focus of this film is Kierkegaard’s passionate, stormy romance with Regine Olsen.  The relationship explodes when Soren breaks off the engagement for the sake of what he sees as his purpose in life, writing. Yet even as Regine is pursued by another man and gets engaged, Soren frantically tries to rekindle their love.

Upheavals dominate other aspects of Kierkegaard’s personal life as well. Five siblings, his mother, and his father all die by the time he turns 25. Physical and psychological torments persist throughout his life, including epilepsy, clinical depression and existential dread. Two
things anchor him through his struggles, however — his faith and his love for Regine.

Kierkegaard’s public and private lives are often at odds. His public persona commands Copenhagen society in the 1840s and 1850s. His dazzling blue eyes frighten and seduce. He is clever, ironic, and witty. His strikingly handsome face is perched on a frail body with spindly
legs and an awkward gait. Yet privately Soren struggles with a brooding depression inherited from his pious father. He often despairs as he is haunted by the fear that he will die prematurely as his siblings did.

Kierkegaard’s writing captures the paradoxes of life: faith versus reason, the individual versus the group, emotion versus rational deliberation. And Kierkegaard’s life is littered with one crisis after another: conflict with his father and brother, with his fiancée Regine, with the Church
(from which he believes Christianity is absent), with journalists, and most fundamentally with himself.

This film is set in old Copenhagen with its baroque palaces and crooked streets. It is the Danish Golden Age, an age of exceptional creativity in art, philosophy, and music. It is also a time of great revolutions, and the rise of capitalism and Marxism.

It would be difficult to over-estimate the influence of Kierkegaard’s thought today. His ideas and language seep unnoticed into contemporary ways of thinking and speaking about paradox, individuality, despair, faith, and the search for meaning. All echo from the towering and tortured soul of Soren Kierkegaard.

The Team

Barbara De Fina has produced or executive produced some 25 feature films and documentaries, including Good Fellas, Cape Fear, Casino, The Age of Innocence, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Color of Money, No Direction Home, and Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene. Her films have won or been nominated for numerous awards, including, among others, an Academy Award Nomination for Best Picture (Good Fellas), the New York Film Critics Award (The Age of Innocence), and the Writer’s Guild of America Award (You Can Count On Me).

Producer & Co-Writer: Thomas P. O’Connor

Thomas P. O’Connor has written and produced over 50 national and international documentaries, some of which have won major awards, including two Emmys and a Cine Golden Eagle. O’Connor’s  documentaries cover a wide variety of subjects from NASA’s first manned lunar landing (The Idea Nobody Wanted) to the international auto crisis (Who Pays, hosted by Studs Terkel). His most recent film, Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, narrated by Derek Jacobi and actor Bill Nighy, was broadcast nationally in March 2013. PBS – International has sold “Dangerous Edge” to some 23 foreign countries, and PBS Video is distributing the DVD. O’Connor is Professor Emeritus of Media Arts at James Madison University.

Co-Producer & Co-Writer: James E. Gilman

James E. Gilman has published four books and numerous articles, including “The Metaphysics of Belief: A Wittgenstein and Collingwood Convergence”, in Religious Studies (Cambridge University Press) in 2016; Christian Faith, Justice and a Politics of Mercy: The Benevolent
Community in 2014. Faith, Reason, and Compassion: A Christian Philosophy of Religion in 2007; and Fidelity of Heart: An Ethic of Christian Virtue in 2001. Gilman is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Mary Baldwin College