Waking Life

Director: Richard Linklater
Genre: Drama/Animation
Year: 2001

Imagine you are at high seas and every aspect of the movie you are watching is riding its own individual wave, when you put these objects together, they make a complete picture, but they still are independent of each other. No matter how calm the sea is on that day, the sight of objects moving within the frame of their own accord, seemingly at random can be nauseating. This film is like that and at least for me, getting past this hurdle in order to get the concept of the film was a task, but one well worth taking.

A dream, within a dream, within a dream, within a dream…etc. All of us have likely experienced waking up from a dream only to find out you are still in a dream you are most likely to wake up from some time after that. The entirety of this film is based on this idea, except that the main character is unable to wake up, forced to experience one random encounter after another with interesting results. But what makes this feverish trip worth it is the dialogues that our character encounters around every corner.

In true Linklater fashion, this film is heavily pregnant with discourse, this time around focusing on theories, anecdotes and personal opinions of what existence truly is, world views, dream theories and how they are all married to make up our actual world. In its most simplistic form, this film is a montage of different theories on life and reality, ranging from the esoteric to the mundane, the scientific to the religious; whether you agree or not on the commentary, undeniably it provides food for thought that far surpasses what you will encounter on your average movie.

So on the one hand you have really inconsistent (and I can see why they purposely might have wanted their animation to look like this), unimpressive animation – understanding that when I say unimpressive I do not mean without merit – combined with really interesting thought provoking content and you have to weight them against each other. Content wins, in my opinion and I am able to overlook the discomfort of the animation for the amount of information and points of view this film provides. However, the viewer that is most concerned with a straight forward story or easy to grasp concepts will HATE this film. There is no true story arcs, there are no climactic moments, per se, but rather this interweaving of characters through a network of intellectual conversations that are a surefire way to bore a large number of the audience.

My advice? Watch this only if you are looking for something to mentally chew on for a while, otherwise stay away from it, you are bound to turn it off in the first twenty minutes.

Rating:
Comments: No real language issues, no nudity or sexuality but there are a couple of disturbing moments. While it is an animation, the content provided would fail to keep any kids attention and…I fear that the fact that it -IS- a movie, will also filter out a lot of adult’s attention. In a way, this film is sadly going to be swept under the carpet without much thought.
Quote: Man with the Long Hair: They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life?