'Examined Life' – Help Is Something We All Need

posted by Jett Loe

Examined Life / Featuring Cornel West Avital Ronell K. Anthony Appiah Martha Nussbaum Peter Singer Slavoj Žižek Michael Hardt Sunaura Taylor Judith Butler / Directed by Astra Taylor

A  somewhat slight, yet entertaining and moving eight-seven minute recording of various known thinkers thinking out loud, ‘Examined Life’ might be better titled ‘Help’.

How do we deal with, and help the Other?

How do we not only embrace our flawed selves but reach out and love?  Is love not the idealisation of someone but the acceptance of the Other with all their deficits and imperfections?

These questions form a sort of narrative through-line in ‘Examined Life’ and I’ll get to them in a second, but first let’s look at the picture’s film-making technique .

When handling exposition in conventional Narrative Film one most always be wary of drag – of boring the audience – of the danger of stopping the pic to tell some much needed bit of information.  One simple, yet effective, technique to avoid this is to bind the exposition into a scene of action, if not outright peril.

James Cameron did this superbly in the original ‘Terminator’ when malnourished soldier from the future Kyle Reese explains his mission to stunned family restaurant waitress Sarah Conner.  Rather than having the scene take place in a room or alleyway – somewhere static – Cameron has this great gob of expositionary dialog, (the whole plot spring), take place during a frenetic car chase.  Clever.

And so in ‘Examined Life’ the Director is confronted with how to make a ‘talking head’ doc of philosophers contemplating our responsibilities in this world palatable and engaging to a mainstream audience not conditioned to be receptive to this type of material.  She does this through movement, pace Cameron, and for the most part she succeeds.

Our thinkers are never static; they’re always moving, (thinking as action – contemplation as physical?), walking, rowing, rolling or in Cornel West’s case being driven in a car, (by the Director herself!); and for the most part this works.

The camerawork comes close to approaching wit several times, with puzzled bystanders watching the proceedings and there’s nice bits of business in Garbage Dumps, Airports and Park Lakes.

As to what is actually being said during the pic? Well, at first one is understandably concerned that weighty philosophical concepts are not suited to a short doc, (especially if seen in the cinema = you can’t pause and track back), and this is noted by the Director right at the beginning.

The solution to this problem is to keep the conversation very narrow in scope both politically and philosophically.  While this can make for some segments that veer dangerously close to Amsterdam Hash Bar philosophising, (you’ll know the sequence when you see it Dear Reader, hint: it’s the one with the turtles), for the most part the film, while slight as mentioned at the top of this post, invigorates with the possibility that one can know, actually know ‘The Other’ and in doing so become a fuller human being.

This alone is reason to see the film; it’s such a cold world out there even if we are truly born in a “push of love – into funk” as Cornel West puts it.  This picture makes you feel closer to all the rest of the peoples who populate this tiny planet, no small achievement.

It’ll also make you want to get moving.

Everyone in ‘Examined Life’ moves at their own speed – and that’s reassuring.   Cornel West posits that moving at different speeds philosophically is alright and outright failing can be good and powerful in its own way.

Of course by virtue of being in a car, he is moving faster than anyone else in the pic, and at the end arrives at his destination.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to what this means.

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‘Examined Life’ is at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville; April 13th-15th

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One other note:  I appreciated the use of a bicycle’s ringing bell to signify what should be an ‘a-ha!’ moment for the viewer.  I’m a sucker for this kind of thing – as when Jeff Bridges in ‘Tucker’ has a stunning realisation in a Cafe and we hear, (if I remember correctly), an order-up bell go off in the distance.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm. It is filed under Belcourt Theatre, Blog, Documentaries, Jett Loe, Jett Loe Reviews, Nashville, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.