Who wants to live forever? And how long should life be, anyway? How long, in fact, is long? What unit of time should be used? Time as it rushes by when you are getting ready for work, or as it drags and almost stalls when you are waiting to leave? Food, sex and death are, or at least should be, the staple obsessions of all the very best people.
And the latter issue is thoroughly examined in Life Extended (August 31, Documentary Channel), a visually and aurally stunning, and intellectually extending, look at the extension of life.
It is worth watching just for American author Jonathan Ames' diatribe on being 41 and spending most of his time with a lingering, mild depression that causes the sort of procrastination that precludes him from completing even the most simple task.
It's not just me.
Life Extended also drops in some fascinating conundrums raised by dragging the time of one's impending demise further into the future.
Martha Pineda, for instance, spends her time with a life sentence as prisoner No 0-163439 in a Florida prison.
"I'm really, really living in the moment," she says, and, not surprisingly, given the United States justice system's tendency to give people 300 to 400 years inside, not keen on the idea of an extension.
Brian Manning, of the Calorie Restriction Society, which could only exist in Los Angeles, raises, perhaps without realising, another little problem with extending life.
The society's members take on a dietary regimen that restricts calorie intake, something shown to slow the ageing process in a range of animals.
"Basically, you're really hungry most of the time," he says.
"You're really, really skinny, but you have a lot of energy, and you're probably going to live a long life."
Great.
Of course, the outlook on longer life is not all gloom.
Advances in the relationship between computing and biology involve some fascinating possibilities for the man-machine, and the shedding of the imperfect body.
Could we, through science, become gods?
But what would happen to population growth and the annoying tendency of the species to want to procreate? There are clearly no easy answers, but Life Extended has a right old crack at an issue we are told humans have not learned to cope with, instead merely developing ways of putting it out of our minds.
And that's easier for people in some parts of the world.
In the industrialised West, the average life span has doubled in the last 200 years.
In Sweden, for instance, the average life span is 81, but in Swaziland, a mere 32 years of age.
Life Extended is a documentary with a sometimes hypnotic sound track, graphic excellence, and some remarkable film work.
It is one for the very best.
