For those who’ve gone a few rounds with capital “P” Philosophy at some point in life or a liberal arts education – or wish they had – Astra Taylor’s Examined Life is for them. If, on the other hand – Plato, schmato – you’re contentedly living the unexamined life and your pulse doesn’t quicken at the mention of post-structuralism or Jacques Derrida, well, you just might learn something here. In this highly quirky, thoughtfully constructed, and beautifully shot film, Taylor (�i�ek!, 2005) takes us along for eight journeys by either foot, car, or canoe with as many philosophers as each expounds upon some strand of philosophical thought, with a nexus to “ethics,” or what Taylor describes as the search for meaning and our responsibilities to others in a world that’s broken and rife with injustice and suffering.
Obviously, a doc pitched to a general audience with this conceit could easily take a tumble down the proverbial slippery slope. We’re introduced to the philosophers by name only, which can be a bit befuddling if they’re not familiar to you, and depending upon their rhetorical or expository skills, sometimes they’re off the screen before you’ve wrapped your mind around what it was they were actually talking about. Maybe it was just me, but I’ll admit that during a few of the less “accessible” segments – including Cornel West’s – I experienced a bit of a flashback to the old college days, trying to make sense of a lecture when I hadn’t done the reading. In our interview, Taylor described her conversation with a manic West (he was in the back seat of her car as she navigated the mean streets of Manhattan) as “centered on the theme of truth, though it veered wildly, touching on everything from intellectual enjoyment to jazz music. Ultimately his comments on catastrophe are perhaps the most central to the film.” (So it wasn’t just me.)
On the other hand, some segments – such as the one where we’re being rowed around a Central Park pond by Michael Hardt as he muses about the history of political philosophy and the struggle to find a workable concept of democracy – are wonderful and enlightening. Hardt recalls the time, in his 20s during the Reagan era, when he and his fellow political “radicals” believed that the only way to study revolution was to actually go to Central America and participate in, or at least observe, Nicaragua’s and El Salvador’s revolutions. When they got down there, they were told by their El Salvadoran comrades-in-arms that really the best use of their time would be for them to go back home and make revolution there. It was simple, nothing to it, they were told: You go into the mountains, start your own armed cells, and make revolution. “Somehow, that just did not correspond with my reality; it made no sense,” Hardt recalls with an ironic chuckle, “and not just the practicality of which rifles to take up to the mountains – the whole idea was lacking and required a real conceptual rethinking.”
Equally captivating are the segments featuring Peter Singer, who discusses consumerism and the responsibilities the rich have to those in the Third World while strolling uncomfortably through Fifth Avenue’s high-end shopping district, and Slavoj �i�ek (the Slovenian philosopher and subject of Taylor’s last film) whose spiel the filmmaker describes as tackling the topic of ecology “with his usual counterintuitive brio, challenging us not only to ‘get rid of nature’ – meaning our idealized view of nature as harmonious – but to denaturalize ourselves – to rid ourselves of our biologically and culturally ingrained prejudices, to uproot our ideological presuppositions.” Got it. And the backdrop for �i�ek!‘s talk is a garbage dump.
Austin Chronicle: How did you choose the philosophers you feature in the film?
Astra Taylor: I picked people based on various criteria.The quality of their work was a factor; they had to have tried [to be] or be open to the idea of addressing an audience beyond the academy; they had to be able to speak on ethical themes; they had to be enthusiastic about the project.The last one was important. The process of filming had to be approached with a certain playfulness and levity, not as drudgery. At a certain point, I had a group that I thought would bounce well off each other, and I just went for it.
AC: What prompt did you give them? Were they all asked to answer the same question or just told to talk about whatever they wanted to?
AT: Countless months were spent reading everything I could in preparation for shooting. Sometimes dozens of questions were prepared.Sometimes we planned in advance to just have a totally spontaneous conversation and see where it went. In almost every case, I threw out a theme that I thought would work well in the context of the larger film. Though the conversations always veered off topic, the center would be found much later in the editing room. Once there, the bigger challenge was editing the film so it felt like a journey, something with an intellectual and emotional trajectory, even though there is no chronological beginning, middle, or end.
AC: So you must have had some major challenges putting this film together.
AT: The first and major challenge was coming up with the proper form for the content. I had a bit of development funding for an ensemble or anthology-style documentary about philosophy, but I was secretly skeptical about the project. Would it just be a bunch of talking heads? If so, where was the cinematic element? What would I show, besides cutting away to their hands or maybe using potentially cheesy animations to illustrate the abstract concepts?Fortunately, I had read Rebecca Solnit’s amazing book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, which opens with a chapter on the relationship between walking and philosophy. … There are literally dozens of examples of walkers lost in thought throughout the history of ideas.
However, the concept of the philosopher’s walk didn’t occur to me as a documentary conceit until I was talking to a friend about how to help one potential subject loosen up for the camera.My friend suggested I interview him outside, strolling around, as he thought that would have the effect of making this person less uncomfortable. After all, walking has a way of getting the blood flowing while also being very calming. A lightbulb went off at that moment. As Solnit makes clear, walking kind of resolves the mind/body dichotomy.By filming philosophers walking, I could reveal how ideas are always embodied as well as rooted in a specific place and time. So the concept for the movie expanded from simply a film about philosophy to also addressing philosophy’s relationship to the world around us.
Anyway, instead of talking heads, I have walking heads.
AC: Have you found that people with philosophy backgrounds get the most from the film?
AT: That was a question I asked myself quite often during the shooting and editing, but it doesn’t seem as relevant now as I thought it would be.The film’s editor and I struggled to find the right balance on this front, as part of my personal mandate was to make a movie that was comprehensible to anyone willing to open themselves up to the experience.
I’ve since shown Examined Life to people of all walks of life, including prominent film professors and those who claim to know absolutely nothing about philosophy, and I don’t think one group gets any more out of it than the other. … There’s nothing like that first stunning encounter with an idea that, while it may not be new, is new to you.I hope some people experience those sorts of epiphanies while watching this movie. And hopefully they’ll have a laugh, too!
AFS Documentary Tour presents Examined Life Wednesday, Feb. 18, 7pm, at the Alamo Ritz. Filmmaker Astra Taylor will be in attendance. Tickets are $4 for AFS members and $6 for the general public. For more info, see www.austinfilm.org.
This article appears in February 13 • 2009.