-By Eric Monder

For movie details, please click here.

In Examined Life, Canadian filmmaker Astra Taylor makes philosophical musing less Ivory Tower and more Hot Dog Stand, thanks to her genial approach. Here is a film about the complexity of human thought that should be inviting to even the everyday moviegoer.

Astra and her crew interview a select number of established writers, speakers and activists who offer their unique views of our existence. By placing her star “eggheads” against very particular backdrops, Astra adds a bit of (sometimes ironic) commentary of her own.

Thus, we hear from Slavoj Zizek (the subject of Taylor’s previous Zizek! and Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema) unexpectedly warning against conservation in front of a London garbage dump; Peter Singer critiquing consumer capitalism on Manhattan’s ritzy Fifth Avenue; Michael Hardt reconsidering the impact of revolution while rowing a boat in Central Park; Martha Nussbaum reassessing social democracy, also in a public park; Avital Ronell pondering obsessive human behavior, once again in a park; Judith Butler talking about individualism and the social contract as she strolls through the Mission District of San Francisco with artist friend Sunaura Taylor; Kwame Anthony Appiah examining the impact of globalization on civilization as he walks through a busy airport terminal; and Cornel West (probably the most recognizable figure in the film) comparing jazz to life, death and human need while speeding along in a taxi cab.

In addition to positioning each thinker in an amusing or revealing mise-en-scène (though maybe one too many in New York), Taylor interweaves the interviews, which gives the film an edge that otherwise might not have been there. Still, Taylor might have looked for either greater common threads or contrapuntal clashes by more frequent intercutting. She even might have created a truly brilliant film had she staged a “meeting-of-the-minds” type of production or injected more startling and deliberate self-reflexivity. At least she avoids (for the most part) letting each person pontificate in stodgy or academic set-pieces.

While less “democratic” than, say, Richard Linklater’s two similar films, Slacker and Waking Life, which offer the views of unknown men and women on the street, it is still a plus to capture well-regarded names in a sort of cinematic time-capsule (something to consider for the next generation of thinkers as well). And Examined Life is far better than some other pretentious and confusing attempts at understanding the meaning of life, such as What the Bleep Do We Know? and the more recent Mattie Fresno and the Holoflux Universe.

Examined Life is not (and shouldn’t be) just for glum intellectuals.

For more information on the film, including where to find a screening, please visit the official website.