David O. Russell’s new film I Heart Huckabees is a manic rumination on the fruitless search for the meaning of life. So how come he looks so relaxed?

The writer-director is sprawled over a chair in the eighth floor suite of a luxury Boston hotel. Casually dressed in a navy blazer and rumpled white shirt, hands clasped behind his head and feet propped up on a coffee table, he exudes an aura of sangfroid that is infectious.

Hailed as one of the finest filmmakers of the 1990s American indie boom, Russell has had no trouble establishing his reputation among the celluloid hipster set. His darkly comedic films have tickled critics and cineastes alike, from the low-budget Spanking the Monkey, a dark comedy about masturbation and incest, to Three Kings, a comedic, scathing take on the first Gulf War.

In Huckabees, Russell mixes an A-list cast (Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman) with a surrealist plot, philosophical conundrums and the eccentric and frenetic tale of an environmental activist who hires two “existentialist detectives” to sort out his life, loves and hates.

The main character, Albert—played by the intense young actor Jason Schwartzman, best known for his debut role as Max Fischer in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore—is a fledgling activist trying to use poetry to help protect a local marsh. In the background looms the specter of consumerism in the form of Huckabees, a department store chain planning on wiping away Albert’s beloved wetlands.

It’s a strange film, and in the interview today Russell seems a strange guy. At one point in the interview he idly picks up a porcelain plate from the hotel nightstand.

“Let’s throw an Armani ashtray out the window,” he says matter-of-factly. His publicists nervously laugh—will he actually do it?

The plate stays indoors, but the threat of mischief is never far with Russell in the room. Later on silence lingers as he considers the relationship between activism and filmmaking.

Russell stares out the window for a few moments. The response finally comes out in a deeply thoughtful tone.

“Activism is the foreplay,” he says slowly. “Moviemaking is the orgasm.”

Long, long pause. No one in the room looks at each other.

“Activism is pinching the nipples,” Russell happily continues, enjoying the moment. “Moviemaking is kissing the nipples.”

Russell speaks with the self-assured tone of a man who takes himself much too seriously. But then he smiles, and it dawns on you—he’s just fucking around.

The same might be said of Huckabees. Beneath a veneer of pseudo-intellectualism, the movie is, at heart, a joke. The plot seems to unfold in a parallel universe, a world where every citizen is required to take a college survey course in philosophy and then spend the rest of their lives discussing it. Mark Wahlberg, as a nihilist firefighter, is introduced having a fight with his girlfriend; instead of bickering over who did or didn’t do the dishes, he is trying to convince her that life is meaningless.

With this absurdism, Russell has tapped into the same vein of postwar art that inspired the tragicomic brilliance of the original masters of existentialism. Huckabees is an unreality, a musical with songs by Sartre and book by Beckett.