Waking Life (2001)
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Waking Life Movie Review
Waking Life is a 2001 animated drama film directed by Richard Linklater. It’s a flawed, but very intriguing and sophisticated movie.
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“The worst mistake that you can make
is to think you’re alive when really
you’re asleep in life’s waiting room“
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It follows a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions. Yes, the twist here is that the main character is actually living in the dream world, but unlike ‘Inception’, the movie’s not insufferably pretentious in that area or too convoluted, but actually intriguing and other-worldly.
The film succeeds in presenting its strange atmosphere mostly thanks to its animation. This is the case of rotoscoping as the actors were first filmed in live-action, and then the movie was turned into animation. However, unlike ‘A Scanner Darkly’, the oddly shaped designs, and this alien, very ethereal animation worked in its favor as it fitted the dream concept phenomenally. Everything thus seemed more in focus, and the results are more than stellar.
My main gripe with this movie is the lack of a stronger connective tissue between the different points and arguments presented here. Certainly, all of those discussions centering on life, metaphysics and the nature of reality are thought-provoking, but they aren’t really unified into a coherent whole. The film simply felt like an overly indulgent intellectual trip for Linklater, and not a particularly meaningful experience when all is said and done.
But individually observed, all discussions here are terrific. Certainly, most do not end in any statement or conclusion, but that’s only understandable having in mind that most are about very difficult, unanswerable issues. Dreams are handled very interestingly here, especially the reality and the idea of lucid dreaming. The same goes for free will, and in particular the idea of collective consciousness fascinated me the most as I personally believe in that idea.
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Waking Life is also very well acted. It was great seeing Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke here, and all of the others, including the main actor did a very good job. But the characterization is not that great. The pacing is pretty good though, and the film’s engaging and sophisticated throughout.
Waking Life is self-indulgent, there is no doubt about it. It also lacks a unifying structure as its various threads and characters remain unconnected. However, the overall concept is phenomenal, the film’s various metaphysical discussions are thought-provoking, at times even fascinating, and its ethereal animation perfectly accompanied its dream world reality.
