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Waking Life
Directed by Richard Linklater
Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, John Christensen
Running Time: 1:37
Country: USA
Year: 2001
Web: Official Site
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More than food for thought, Waking Life is a philosophical and visual banquet for the mind. From scenes of immolation, floating and tango, to micro-waved burritos and existentialism, Linklater has created a provocative film.
We first encounter a boy who floats into the sky unless he holds onto something to keep him grounded. In his adult life (played by Wiley Wiggins), we follow him as he moves in a dreamland from person to person in various scenarios, having never lost his sense of drifting skyward. Early in the film he's in an accident and while part of his time and ours is spent wondering if the reason he can't wake up is because he's in a coma and nearing death, most of the film is purely enjoying the visuals and listening. Typical plot questions are secondary to the exchange of ideas. Various conversations and monologues about known, personal and questionable philosophies (many about dreaming and that time before we wake) take shape. A much-needed dose of existentialism colors the rants, raves, and ruminations of a unique cast of characters.
Linklater digitally shot the film and used a modern version of rotoscoping—in laymen's terms creating animation from live action by way of tracing. The film was then colored using computer software to create layers of color. The effect is beautiful: impressionism, solarization, by the numbers cartoon-like, eerily human. The images have a dreamlike quality unlike anything that's ever been seen.
Existentialist philosophy permeates throughout the film. If it's the belief that "people have absolute freedom of choice and that the universe is absurd, with an emphasis on the phenomena of alienation and anxiety", Wiggins embodies it and shows that it's a hopeful philosophy. As he visits over 20 people, some who see him, some who don't, all offer him a bone to chew on their way of thinking. Particularly refreshing about the film is that so many different ideas are offered without shoving anything down the throat or sounding overly pretentious.
Like a dream, the film fluidly moves from idea to idea or scene to scene without much explanation but with the implicit acceptance that the state of dreaming allows what reality does not. Watching Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reunited and bedroom philosophizing in one scene and then watching two men shoot each other in a bar while discussing the merits of no gun control ("A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny.") necessitates a suspension of reality. Steven Soderbergh appears, as does director Richard Linklater (as a pinball wizard philospher no less). Some criticisms have been aimed against Waking Life for being too much like a college dorm room session. Good! Avoiding the simple explanations is a useful exercise now and again. It's certainly preferable to the shameless marketing/proselytizing that goes on in most of modern media. I might also add it was enjoyable to watch something basically free of crude product placements or a bad soundtrack trying to promote a bunch of bands with no real tie in to the film. As for the music in the film, what could be better than tango to convey the ultimate reverie?
A somnambulist walking and floating and meeting people satiates a desire to see something more than a self-serving gabfest onscreen. A void in film has been filled whereby it can and should be used as a forum to discuss culture instead of just spouting opinions about current non-events based on popular media.
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Anji Milanovic
 A Scanner Darkly
Fast Food Nation
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Waking Life review
