Review of Waking Life (2001) by Scott C — 03 Oct 2008

Linklater treads a fine line between pretension and profundity in this picture, but ends up pulling the piece off with style and class, as Wiley Wiggins' confused slacker stumbles through a series of encounters with bizarre individuals and struggles to determine the nature of his reality.

Is he sleep walking through life or wake-walking through his dreams? Was he involved in a car crash and his dying synapses are firing for the last times? Is he perhaps dead already and in some kind of afterlife? The film never pushes these questions, letting them bob half visible in the background instead and allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions.

Though more than that -- this is a film that requires no conclusions. In the ambiguity, the dream like surrealism of scenes, Linklater presents a world that is all about the journey, not the destination.

At times claustrophobic and oppressive, at others heart warming and serene, Waking Life deals with fundamental questions about our perception of reality and the nature of existence -- though of course it is hard to express such questions, let alone their answers, in definable terms, and like all great art, the film works on levels of emotion beyond the grasp of simple words.

The animation technique is far from a gimmick -- it enhances the vibrancy and otherworldly nature of the film, and the overall effect is more powerful than if it had been only live action or only animated.

Waking Life in fact is a film that exists in the void between absolutes -- dream/reality, language/emotion, film/animation. That should be the central theme of this review, but I'm too tired to rewrite it so there you go.

The cast of Linklater usual suspects do as good a job as ever, with many nods given to previous Linklater films. Fans of Before Sunrise/Sunset will be especially happy to see Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their characters (or do they?) for a short but sweet scene discussing a familiar theory.

This film is clearly not for everyone -- if your idea of hell is watching people wandering around discussing Nietzsche and existentialism for an hour and a half then keep away. But for those looking for an intelligent and thought provoking examination of what it means to be alive I can't recommend Waking Life enough.

I guess I should say that line about it existing in the void between absolutes here really as a sharp way of ending. But I'm not going to. So there.