Review of Waking Life (2001) by Liam P — 15 Sep 2009

A quick glance at the score I give this movie has probably immediately turned me into some kind of conformist, a philistine who only enjoyed the man getting set on fire, or who thought the entire movie was about drugs. In truth I did not want to watch this movie, I did because of all the buzz from people I know. The very concept of a movie where people talk to each other being animated is unappealing to me, it's as though Linklater assumes that his audience is going to be bored just watching the movie, so he has to play every piece of the frame jiggle in some direction. While this does succeed in giving the movie some dreamlike qualities to it which hearkens back to the themes of the movie it proves to be more distracting than anything else. I listen to some man attempt to explain his philosophies of dreams or growth and death, but as if he wasn't muddled enough in what he was saying, his head is constantly changing shape, and the animator changes conspicuously between shots and sometimes between characters in the same shots. If that weren't distracting enough, the film itself is plot less, and instead of just going with this fact, Linklater tries to impose some kind of direction to it. One unifying character is maintained throughout the film, although he does nothing to set up much at all except to sometimes make a gesture to another character which causes them to enter into their speech about life, the universe and everything with little regard to said protagonist. There are however, small segments showcasing his development as he struggles to differentiate his dream life and his waking life, but this is extremely secondary to the speakers who dominate the film.

But aside from the actual filmmaking of Waking Life, there is the philosophical vignettes and monologues by varieties of quick talking nameless amorphous characters. Some of which are practically impossible to make out any kind of meaning from. Take for example the angry driver character, he is so loud and obnoxious it's hard to listen to him, and his speech is so long and meaningless that it lead me to thinking entirely about the horrible setting of this monologue. This man screams into a microphone, making his already loud, angry voice even more muffled by applying a filter to make it sound more like it's delivered through a megaphone. He barks his bizarre monologue over the course of maybe five minutes, all the while his character is driving recklessly through downtown streets. What is this man's intent? Obviously no one would hear all of his speech from the street or from a car unless they followed him or his megaphone was even louder than it sounds. Even if they did, he is so vague in his requests of the common man and so unconvincing to his opinions that there is no way even the stupidest of men would do what he does in this scene.

Beyond even the most clumsy settings, bizarre art design, useless exposition, there has got to be some worthwhile philosophy right? Occasionally a character will spout off something unrelated to the central theme that will be interesting to think about, good example is the bespectacled man who talks about free will and determinism. However, a great deal of the movie is spent talking about the sleeping state. The movie is after all called Waking Life. However so much of what they talk about is nonsense. The fact is, no matter how disappointing it is, sleep is an evolution we have gained to be able to conserve energy to work during daylight hours, and the sleep state that we enter is merely a random projection of thoughts, memories and emotions. There is no deeper meaning behind dreams, despite your own subconscious emotions and memories, yet the movie plays with ideas of the waking life being equal with the sleeping life, as if it was a world of it's own, or that through sleep you can experience things that your conscious mind cannot comprehend. Which is completely ridiculous.

It's like videotaping a philosophy class, except your tapes are only five minutes long, so you miss every between speakers, and in post you added an after effects filter to make everything look two dimensional and inter-cut shots of you waking up and flying around.

I will never understand anyone's enjoyment of the movie.