Movie review: 'Examined Life'
Examined Life
3 stars
Documentary by Astra Taylor
Prepare to be alternately dazzled and overwhelmed by “Examined Life,” a compendium of short yet expansive interviews with nine superstars of contemporary philosophy, from Judith Butler to Cornel West.
Filmmaker Astra Taylor conducts all her interviews while walking (or in one case driving) against the backdrop of urban settings. With the hustle and bustle of midtown Manhattan behind him, West, whose boisterous personality and dandyish looks have made him as close to a celebrity as philosophers can get, advocates that we push aside notions of perfection in order to “evacuate the language of disappointment.” Butler, strolling around San Francisco’s Mission District, deconstructs the meaning of “disability,” stripping it of pejorative value. Peter Singers waxes on about the ethics of spending as he wanders down Fifth Avenue, while Slavoj Zizek ponders humanity’s supposed relationship with nature amid a sea of trash heaps.
“Examined Life” is a dense documentary that begs multiple viewings, or at least good note-taking. For every gem of a thought that prompts you to examine your life, 10 more thoughts follow in fast succession, leaving you reeling. While some of the intellectuals ground their monologues in the here and now, others keep it abstract, which can get truly laborious if philosophical discourse is not your cup of tea.
In the end, what emerges is a collective exhortation to live life inquisitively and experience the world with an open mind. Taylor’s self-imposed challenge of exploring philosophy on film, rather than in books, is a curious experiment that successfully stokes the mind, even if it also occasionally puts it to sleep.
(Plays through March 5 at IFC Center)
