As any domestic cook who’s ever made one knows, it’s virtually impossible to do anything during the final twenty minutes or so except stir, add liquid, worry; stir, add liquid, worry, and so on. At best you might have time to leave the hob just long enough to shake an ice-cube into a de-stressing drink; normal sociability is quite out of the question.’

Precisely!

Some weeks ago I’d joined Melbourne’s unexpected (at least to me) and laudable stampede to see the Dali exhibition in its last days, and yesterday it struck me that at that exhibition I had managed to achieve a fledgling form of looking ‘a little more closely,’ as Damon Young expresses it. I joined the queues snaking through the packed gallery in walking clothes, tired after a day-long outing, so I was physically sated, unwired. Emptying my mind, at least to some extent, enabled me to take what I could from Dali’s dizzyingly eclectic output. At the end, I wasn’t even able to categorise my ‘best pictures’ or even to ‘judge,’ but what I carried away from those shrouded rooms was a fond fascination for the artist, coupled to a desire to both see more (but when will that ever be?) and to learn more (about Dali, about his art). The experience, at the time hardly revolutionary, now seems to me wholly successful.

• The Entrepreneur, made by Jonathan Bricklin, is a doco about Bricklin’s father, an irrepressible businessman in the car industry over decades. It proves to be a fascinating look at the unstoppable force of business, as the father chases investors and car manufacturing partners in China. 4 stars.
• Josh Whiteman’s Shadow Play: The Making of Anton Corbijn documents the move of the famed portrait photographer to film. Corbijn is as enigmatic as his camera work but the doco generates great warmth and tension, and I found it to be a teasing meditation on creativity. 4 stars.
• Directed by Benôit Jacquot, Villa Amalia, a drama about a woman recreating life anew, exudes drama even though the underlying plot (apparently based on a book) is not event laden. Isabella Huppert is outstanding but the end fizzles. 3 stars.

• My only sci-fi movie from the festival (there don’t seem to be that many of them around these days), Moon (directed and conceived by Duncan Jones) is low-key drama about an astronaut seemingly going mad. The plot and direction contain a few jarring missteps, and the resolution was mediocre, but what saved the film was spot-on acting by a favourite of mine, Sam Rockwell. 3 stars.
• Mystery surrounded the plot of The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos, a documentary about a Japanese dolphin cove. It turns out to be brilliantly conceived and directed, and the denouement could increase the number of vegetarians in the world. 4 stars.
• It seems filmmaker Astra Taylor likes filmic explorations of philosophy. Examined Life comprises strolls with philosophers and in theory it could work well. A packed cinema suggested many hoped it would be. But only Peter Singer is able to explicate his thoughts without the stultifying jargon philosophers seem driven to use, and the entire hour and a half was miserably boring. 1 star.

Anyone who has read Maisel’s last few books will have observed the emergence and sharpening of a consistent philosophy. The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without Gods is the culmination of that thinking. Infused with palpable joy, but also with hardheaded practicality, The Atheist’s Way offers a manifesto and operational paradigm for unbelievers. He refuses to pull any punches, as this early paragraph makes clear:

Let me remind you why I am framing these ideas around the term atheism and not around some less charge word such as secularism, humanism, rationalism, skepticism, naturalism, existentialism, or freethinking. First, it would be a shame to miss what may be an opportunity, since we are perhaps finally ready to face an indifferent universe with new views and to live purposefully and well without gods. Second, rallying around atheism underscores the heightened threat that religious belief poses to the survival of the species.

The bedrock of The Atheist’s Way is a very existential perspective (and here I’m expressing matters far less eloquently that Eric Maisel): the world intrinsically holds no purpose, so we cannot find life’s meaning. Instead we boldly make meaning. We decide what is meaningful to us and then take action, minute by minute, month by month, to make meaning. When the nihilistic nature of the universe threatens our mind, as it must often do, we employ courage (Maisel calls this, in one of his many wonderful turns of phrase, ‘nominating yourself as the hero of your own story’). We decide what values matter and we make ourselves moral beings. Life is not seeking but personal making.

Maisel’s clear, sparkling exposition brings The Atheist’s Way to life, and his logic from beginning to end is highly persuasive. Unlike most of his books, this one does not offer ‘exercises’ to put the book’s ideas into practice, but he points to parts of two other books (not coincidentally the two I mentioned above) for more concrete assistance. Above all, The Atheist’s Way makes one proud of being an atheist. This book is highly recommended for those of similar persuasion, or those wavering in their belief in the supernatural.

• Vernon describes A Secular Age, Charles Taylor’s history of ideas, as ‘a long book and gathers an extraordinary amount of material, is remarkably even-handed, and sparkles with insights.’
• I’ll also obtain a book I should have read when it came out, Iris Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals.

The problem – and the very great appeal – of a festival is that you cannot predict how worthy the films will be. They’re all written up attractively and any mini previews in local newspapers also tend to be respectful. My solution? I choose according to a handful of ‘ideas,’ either grand themes or locations or subjects. This year I’m focusing on half a dozen conceptual categories:

• Life’s meaning and how to make it and how to focus on it (this is just my Undistraction ‘destination’ on the right)
• Vengeance (this happens to be a festival category)
• The spirit of The Clash, that is, rock music’s finer aspects
• My ‘destination’ Vietnam Redux, being any signs of exiting the morass of Iraq
• Genocide and related human rights blights
• Creativity

Here are the films in order: My Neighbor, My Killer; Sergio; Red Riding 1974; Citizen Havel; Amoz Oz – The Nature of Dreams; Red Riding 1980; Blessed; Van Gogh: Brush with Genius; Moon; The Cove; Examined Life; Paper Soldier; It Might Get Loud; Flame & Citron; In the Loop; Louise-Michel; Young Freud in Gaza; The Hurt Locker; Zift; Looking for Eric; The Entrepreneur; Shadow Play: The Making of Anton Corbijn; Villa Amalia; Burme VJ; Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect; Letter to Anna. I’ll report back as I see them.

Seneca: The Life of a Stoic is lucidly written and logically organized, but the middle heart of it is a detailed, and to me most baffling, long chapter on Stoicism and Seneca’s contribution to that school of philosophy. Some aspects of Stoicism became clearer; for example, how Seneca could be a philosopher developing an unencumbered-life philosophy at the same time as advising despot Nero and staying rich, and the political milieu that can be so misleading compared to the norms we now possess. But much of the discussion was way too academic for this steaming brain. And the biographical portions of the book – the short first and third chapters – suffered from being short and, again, too academic. For a serious student of philosophy, I can recommend Seneca, but alas, it was not for me.

I must admit to disappointment with myself – both Seneca’s own Letters from a Stoic and this Seneca biography have failed to significantly educate me, although something in me remains fascinated by the topic. I think I’ll return to Damon’s book before deciding what to do next.

Vernon is an engaging, stylish writer who expresses philosophical ideas plainly and eloquently. He aptly quotes philosophers and thinkers from all eras. Modern experiences are incorporated, as well as personal insights. In the book’s early pages, Vernon explores different notions of ‘happiness’ before ditching the term for another: ‘wellbeing.’ Predictably, but I must admit persuasively, he suggests wellbeing is not just gaining pleasure and avoiding suffering, but something more: ‘Pleasure matters. But meaning matters more.’ According to him, what matters most is being open to transcendence, a notion that he treats in a broad fashion, allowing room for religious belief as well as more Eastern methodologies. Finally, he spends a chapter exploring love, or something called ‘the good.’ He never hectors, he combines logic with more intuitive reasoning, and the ideas flow smoothly.

If you’re troubled by lack of existential meaning (‘what’s the point’), Wellbeing would make for an absorbing, possibly most useful read.