The Nature of Existence

As that great thinker, Judy Garland, once put it, "Why was I born, why am I living?" So Roger Nygard, accustomed to probing the profound in "Trekkies," Suckers" (about car salesmen), and Larry David, undertakes in The Nature of Existence to pose to "experts" and others the deep questions about life, god, truth, and related trivialities.

He travels the world, interviewing the young and the jaded, the confirmed and the skeptical, the Ultimate Christian Wrestler and Richard Dawkins. Alternately quite serious and wryly funny, Nygard inserts hinself in the film as interrogator of comedians. children, religious figures, and philosophers. Where else will Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the Stonehenge Druid King Arthur Pendragon balance the string-theorist Leonard Susskind and the rabid evangelical Brother Jed Smock?

For all the potpourri of opinion, Nygard is serious even in the more light-hearted moments. He does not try to tilt or argue, letting opinions have their day and say. Various religions and belief systems are examined, as are -- vide Dawkins, et al. -- "systems" of disbelief, but all are afforded a non-judgmental airing. Even pizza chefs and tweeners have contemplated their navels. This partly accomplished by Nygard's fluid and organic editing, which despite the incredible diversity of person, opinion, and setting, never plays at catty juxtapostions or fast and easy gotchas.

If this audience member still doesn't know the answer to Judy's question, he still enjoyed The Nature of Existence asking the right questions.

                                             Howard Buck