2008, USA
Documentary, Drama, History
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Extended version:
What is the meaning life? Director Astra Taylor uses her film, Examined Life, to pull this discussion out of smoky dorm rooms and back into the everyday. Following sagacious thinkers of all philosophies, she nudges intellectuals as they walk and talk and break down the world around us.
Philosophy 101 this is not. These subjects skip the prologue and jump to the concluding epilogue of their years of study, fresh for debate but certain in their beliefs. When the director does provide a rare interjection, it is evident that she herself is schooled in similar studies, and in fact Taylor was a sociology instructor in a past life. Her first and previous film, Zizek!, documented the thoughts of philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and this film uses him and seven others to demonstrate the complexities of better understanding the interactions of the human race.
The scholars wander cities, reflecting on ideas centuries older than their manmade surroundings yet applied to the modern life. The camera occasionally becomes distracted from its talking head duties and studies strangers mingling on a bench or huddled by an elaborate shop window. The subjects are rarely diverted, focusing on the task of divulging their deepest philosophical beliefs into ten dense minutes each.
Doctrines range from the finality of life (professor of religion and African American Studies Cornel West), the need to create a world better through our existence (bioethics professor Peter Singer), the importance of being a cosmopolitan (philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah), the deconstruction of the social contract (law and ethics professor Martha Nussbaum), the reality of revolution (political philosopher Michael Hardt), ecology as an escape for confronting catastrophes (philosophy professor Žižek), the social model for disability (comparative literature professor Judith Butler and activist Sunaura Taylor), and even the destructiveness of searching for any meaning at all (comparative literature professor Avital Ronell). These theorists talk in absolutes about often intangible ideas, yet there is little denying the captivation that results from their mini dissertations. One would assume that bringing these minds together would result in a heated battle of wills, ending in truces which depend on their selective theories in social discourse.
Examined Life is truly that: the world views these thinkers have applied to the masses and tangled histories of our many cultures. It is heady stuff, requiring either intense reflection or thorough follow-up in the library. At the very least, a passionate coffee house discussion.