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‘Life and Other Problems’ Review: The Death of a Giraffe Kicks Off a Doc Big on Questions but Short on Insights
Max Kestner’s meandering meditation on 'Life and Other Problems' serves up little but placid platitudes about age-long philosophical inquiries.
Clearly rankled by the incident and the issues it brought up about what kind of lives are valued, the filmmaker quickly introduces us to Bengt Holst, the then-scientific director of Copenhagen Zoo who explains his reasoning for ending Marius’s life. Instead, wanting to have all these disparate elements and interdisciplinary queries speak to one another leaves Kestner asking questions to his interviewees like, “Is the giraffe related to microbes, like we are?” in response to a rather provocative proposition about how it’s hard to set a cut-off threshold, scientifically at least, between what’s alive or not. Compare that to the vast vistas of arid landscapes, lush forests and forceful oceans that play backdrop to Kestner’s chats with scientists, many of which still find us talking in labs and research centers.
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