"Examined Life" - Astra Taylor, 2008

Examined Life essentially starts with a disclaimer as filmmaker Astra Taylor backpedals to stay facing the first full interviewee of the sort-of-philosophy-travelogue, Avital Ronell. She poses the question (something that will be done by every subject of the film consistently for the next roughly 80 minutes) of whether or not film can really clasp down on philosophy the way a book can. She specifically doubts her own structure right from the beginning; that is, eight ten-minute conversations with philosophers captured by a camera. Unfortunately, she might be correct in her misgivings.

Now don't get me wrong - this is an enjoyable watch through and through. The thinkers that Taylor has gathered have ideas that, though perhaps a bit elementary for the purpose of exposing viewers to "big ideas" in a sort of pop-philosophy way, are nevertheless profound and generally interesting. Think of this as cinema's contemporary supplement to Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy - a touchstone for laypeople that never panders or wades into completely obvious material. Viewers will find themselves agreeing and disagreeing (sometimes vehemently) with the individuals on screen, as well they should. To go through each section as an individual module isn't wholly necessary; the strengths and weaknesses are largely the same.

The Weaknesses
Starting with the bad, Examined Life has flaws that mainly reside in the aspects regarding filmmaking itself. The most glaring problem here is the strict(-ish?) formatting of the interviews - many of these well-rounded, intelligent people are reduced to somewhere between a soundbite and a YouTube crash course of some kind to their respective fields and sub-fields. This creates a fragmented experience that makes the whole thing feel like an obvious byproduct of Internet rearing, and if it weren't so obviously an error in judgment on the part of the filmmaker, it might even make for an interesting meta-discussion to explore if the film has something to say about a group of young wannabe critical theorists who get their Heidegger from Wikipedia and pull up SI on their tablets. The other major mistake in this reviewer's opinion is putting an awkwardly middling set of limits on these thinkers. Instead of clamping down on ten minutes and a very specific topic that could be explored satisfactorily in that timespan, Astra Taylor chooses to give fairly broad topics to each individual (ethics for Singer, ecology for Zizek, etc.) and then a fairly narrow window in which to expand. A mistake that ends up being minor to enjoyment of the film but could have been a major plus if reversed is the structure of the discussions with the philosophers themselves. With the sole exception of Judith Butler, all of the interviewees are generally monologuing (with Kwame Anthony Appiah among others almost coming off as some sort of infomercial for his school of thought on cosmopolitanism). These people's perspectives are fascinating, but in this format, the only section I found myself completely in love with (and, indeed, it was the segment that inspired me to track down the movie to watch in its entirety in the first place) involved two people of different experiences (Butler and the disabled sister of Ms. Taylor) making connections between their focuses in activism, thought, etc. How interesting to see how the secular Singer and religious West would have hammered out their differences! How fun to see scientists and people of positivist persuasions engage someone like Zizek, who is irreverent to the point of stating ecology is a new ideological delusion! Get any combination of people in this film to discuss revolution together, and you have 80 minutes of me at the edge of my seat!

The Strengths
There is a lot to redeem Examined Life, however. Despite a fairly disinterested and uninteresting lens and plan for assembling the film, what was gathered is all very fascinating. It is more a testament to the thinkers themselves, but all of them are very eloquent and excited about their subjects. Even when I found myself disagreeing, I was never bored by the film. My personal favorite passages are in fact the Zizek and Butler sections, the former because of its radical stance and surprisingly sound defense, and the latter because of its high quality execution and the elasticity of its subject matter.

Ultimately, Examined Life as a film fails in a few too many aspects to give Astra Taylor accolades for much, but it succeeds so readily at acquainting the uninitiated with new ideas and at engaging those who find themselves interested in this sort of thing already that it is hard to dislike.

★★½