As you watch this film, you go through three phases: 1) What the heck is this? 2) Fascination 3) Synthesis - What does it all mean? Here's where I came out after a couple days of reflecting on the last question: These four guys have jobs that are quirky and about as different from one another as they could be. None the less, each man is fully absorbed in what he does and uses his job, over the course of a life time, as a meditation on two questions; Who am I? and What is the nature of the world? By the end, they all come to consistent conclusions about themselves, and because of the way their dialogue and images are interspersed, they blur and seem to merge into one single person. That one person then is absorbed by the world of their own mutual conception.
The film is ambitious in undertaking these big questions and I think ultimately successful.
The film is ambitious in undertaking these big questions and I think ultimately successful.