I heart Huckabees - 6

Good, but not great. Usually films are about the story and message that a writer or director is interested in communicating. This film does this, but in an unusual way. It asks more questions than it answers, and I think that this is what the theme of the movie is. The philosophy of the film is that each individual must figure out the truth or at least what reality is and is about. It starts with the premise that everyone must start over from the beginning, the past is only to inform the present, no one can speak with authority. This is doesn't seem to fit with real life, in which often, too many people speak with authority. I think the writers point is that people should be more like the characters in the film, rather than a reflection of how people really interact. Some of the good questions are: Is life meaningful or meaningless? Is there anyway to know this? What is the connection between the cosmos(big physically speaking) and human life (small)? What does human suffering tell us about reality? How are humans to respond to it? These are all the great questions that I think make someone religious, to say you are not-religious is to give up on these questions. These questions are more than what we can say just from our sense perception, that is why I think they are religious in nature, which I think of as basic to human thinking. Russell's only conviction it seems is that people are so individualistic that they can only discover the truth for themselves, and others are merely guides, which allows for someone to deny what cannot be denied, and lived with. Which seems right on one level but not so on a different one. I kept thinking throughout the film that the relationship between philosophy and theory is seperated by a fuzzy line with practice and how people live with the consequences of ideas. This film will be as good as the dialogue and discussion that you have about it, which shouldn't be difficult.