In telling about this film, one stops. Thinks, starts to speak stops again. In describing it, first word we would reach for is surreal. This is most important. As well, we have the words possibilities, mind trip, and fluid perception.
"Waking Life" is filmed in a brand new way, superimposing digital animation on live-action digital video. The resulting film is a brightly colored cartoon world where everything seems to be in constant flux. No image is static, they are constantly rippling and heaving. The visual movement suggests that the universe and all matter are constantly changing, a fable-like metaphor for open-ended perception, and the application of technique is brilliant. Here is where you apply the first adjective. Surreal, surreal, surreal. Terrific.
Right at the beginning we are faced with a haunting image of a boy, about nine years old. Striped T-shirt, he takes hold of the car door handle as his body begins to float out from under him. Tugged by some mysterious force into the atmosphere, he clings tightly, resisting, refusing to drift away. This is the scene that fades us into the film proper.
Which is the most universal human characteristic, fear or laziness?*
So we talk about plot, or story line, or narrative. At the center of all this dazzling visual activity we have an unnamed fellow (played by Wiley Wiggins) who wakes up in a dream, who spends most of the film in a dream-state. This laid-back fellow seems to be a college student who is meandering through life accumulating information without heading towards a goal. The information is gathered from a series of interactions with seemingly random people; students, teachers, street people and television personalities. The film merges from one scene to the next by a mere shimmering of screen colors or by zooming in for a close-up and coming through a face into another location, where our nameless protagonist keeps ambling through this fluidity. It is only midway in his circuitous journey that he realizes that every time he thinks he has awakened, he has only entered another chapter of an ongoing dream. Hence, he is never quite sure whether he is conscious or not, never sure whether the people he is talking to are real, or imagined.
Your life is yours to create.*
Chapter after chapter, our nameless guy is listening. What is gathered is a hodge-podge of life theories and human consciousness. Some make sense, some are too intellectual or scientific to follow properly, some are totally ludicrous. Sources offered range from Andre Bazin to Philip K. Dick to Jean-Paul Sartre. Not all of theories fit together without contradiction, not all of them quite answer any or everything. Mostly what we are offered are questions, not conclusions. Not all encounters in the film were scripted - some were improvised and hence what Linklater has given us is extremely fluid and open-ended. He creates a dialogue with us, the viewers, in which we interweave our own experiences into our interpretation of the realities shown. I told you we would need the words possibilities, speculations and fluid perception.
There's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity.*
Okay. I will tell you what: It is easy to imagine watching Linklater's movie stoned, is easy to imagine it would be a good experience. It is also tempting, while watching it, to sit back and let it all flow right over you, to let what-if what-if what-if flow to a cumulative impact that the New York Times calls `a stoned-out Big Bang of human thought'. It would be good, but it is even better to absorb it while fully attentive. The dialogue is such that is extremely flexible, dexterous; addresses difficult ideas without seeming overbearing. Appearances are deceiving; the cartoonish animation should only serve to heighten the significance of what we are told, to make each one more visually distinct from the other as well as to demonstrate the crazy patchwork of human experience. Let me tell you, it would not be a bad idea to see this movie twice, there is also subtle humor and humanity in there that should not be treated lightly.
But: But: Oh yes. You'd do well to remember the words of Linklater when he introduced the movie at the Sundance Film Festival. "How many of you out there are on drugs?" Linklater asked the audience. Several hands went up. "Good," he said. "This is for you. The rest of you, just bear with me."
And then - some of Linklater's words regarding the first scene with the little boy, and further discussing his film, dreams and reality perception:
That is a very early memory of mine... I call it a memory, but obviously it took place in a dream state. When you're a little kid, you don't really make the distinction that clearly. I remember it very clearly because it was scary but kind of exhilarating -- a sort of nongravity, upward pull away from what you felt the whole world was, but at the same time there was some force begging me to stay. As you get older, you build up a solid model of real versus unreal, and you start depreciating the unreal... The way a film works on a person's brain is very much like the way a dream unfolds. You sort of accept it, and you fall into it, yet you don't really -- something holds you back... in`Waking Life'... the film becomes conscious of itself and ... you become conscious of watching a film. It parallels the experience of waking up in a dream -- when you become conscious that you're dreaming.
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WAKING LIFE, 2001: Written and directed by Richard Linklater. Music score by Glover Gill, performed by Tosca Tango Orchestra Running time: 99 minutes. Rated R for profanity. Credited cast overview:
The film had at its foundation a stream of consciousness narrative style. Though there appeared some semblance of a continuing story throughout the entirety of the piece, the series of events in the film transpired in not so much a logical or sequential fashion as they did through a cognitive progression of associations. Complex thoughts and concepts were presented to the viewer sometimes as lectures delivered by an expert in the related field but most often as casual conversations encountered by the protagonist or an anonymous voyeur. The portrayal of the near-constant barrage of intellectual discourse as commonplace everyday occurrences rendered the string of events in the storyline as surrealistic yet profound.
The adoption of animation as its format added a dream-like quality to the viewing experience, thus adding another dimension to the tale by making the story-telling medium itself similar to the very phenomenon under investigation. With its constantly shifting backdrop and whimsically cartoon-y peripheral animations, abstract ideas were made that much more concrete, being graphically depicted before the audience in an environment that was clearly not static and yet somehow cerebral at the same time. Couple this with the fact that more than a score of animators added their personal touch to the way the characters and scenery were visually represented and what is conveyed to the viewer is the message that identity may not be static but can still remain distinguishable.
The integration of the visual style with the stream of consciousness approach of the narrative combine to form a movie experience that compels the viewer to engulf himself in not only the questions that arise in the story but in the metaphysical environment those questions foster. Throughout the course of the movie, the question "Am I dreaming?" was constantly posed as a test against subjective reality. With the unconventional storytelling style, the dynamic animation approach, and the weighty discussions encountered, the viewer is left with the impression that he himself could have possibly slipped into a dream-state and is questioning the reality he finds himself in.
I sat down to watch an "animated movie about philosophy." For two hours I listened and watched, watched and listened. At times it was difficult to do both simultaneously. The film's richness and quality of colour made it achingly beautiful to the point of distraction. But I listened to the ideas that were being discussed, to the ideas that echoed after they had been spoken. And I listened to what I was retaining of the wave of words washing over me. I thought about certain questions.
How do we define our identity.
How do we find meaning in our lives.
How do we understand reality.
How do we relate to each other.
How do we choose to live our lives.
I watched the movie. And I watched myself watching the movie, and taking away what was crucial and relevant to my life. The credits ran and I didn't move, and neither did the friends who I had seen the movie with. We sat until the credits ended and the theater emptied and we wandered out into the night, talking, smoking, talking, walking, talking. The world was different - we were awake, shotguns loaded with information, firing in various directions. A woman asked me for money for McDonalds food. When I told her I had no change she stopped me and asked me to buy them for her for the sake of my karma. I listened, and bought them for her. A minor gesture, but I felt she appreciated my smile as well as the cookies. We continued on our walk.
As the night wore on I could feel the intensity fading, the immediacy of the images and ideas moving to the background of my mind. We grasped at these images as they faded for the next two hours, our conversations growing more distant from the movie as we walked the streets of the city with no direction other than forward. Eventually we boarded the bus home and made dinner for ourselves, drinking wine and yelling at each other good-naturedly around the table, laughing.
Post-modernism is generally seen as a pessimistic ideology - I see it as the opposite. Every day, we are given the opportunity to recreate ourselves. Everyday, we can take the chance to accept responsibility in all its forms.
Our actions are influenced by the things we see, the messages we hear and the people we come into contact with. Sometimes things bring us together. They wake us up. They shake us, just a little. Enough to make us focus, to clarify, and to think a little harder. I may not be able to clarify what is was about Waking Life that I found beautiful, worthwhile, valuable. But I can tell you that I left the theatre connected, with my heart and mind open. Everything seemed a little crisper that night.
We strive our whole lives for those singular moments, those times that we connect with each other, that we forget how alone we are in the world. We live for those moments.
Not many of the ideas in the film were entirely new to me. But what was new was their beauty - their context in a shimmering, colourful world. That was new to me. I took that away with me. And I'm trying to hold on to it.
What follows is intended to be a Scene Guide, an easy reference to the specific ideas in the movie. I'm not certain if this movie can be spoiled in the traditional sense. The "plot" is to this movie what the score is to so many others, it contributes, but you'd get the point without it. However, by definition what I am about to do will spoil this movie terribly if you haven't seen it before. That said, lets dive in!
Waking Life is above all an exploration of the relationship between the self and "reality". It uses the phenomenon of lucid dreaming as both device and metaphor. As device, the entire movie is the dream of the main character, played by Wiley Wiggins. We watch as he progresses through the stages of awakening. At first he is a passive observer, interjecting very little into the dialogue, unaware that he is dreaming. As he awakens he begins to play a more active part until finally he is a lucid dreamer seeking to "wake up".
It is how the movie uses dreaming as metaphor that will be the grist of most conversations. Here, Linklater is exploring a theme as old as humanity. In Eastern mystical traditions and religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta) there is Enlightenment, in which a person 'awakens' to the true nature of reality and the role their 'self' occupies within it. In Existentialism, as opposed to Postmodernism or Deconstructionism, we are encouraged to awaken to our responsibility for and ability to create our individual life. Related is the philosophy of the Situationists, directly responsible for one scene and contributing to many others, in which direct action is encouraged as a means for the individual to awaken to and escape from the modern consumer society or trap. The last -ism mentioned is perhaps the most important. In the context of this film Gnosticism is the belief that we are mired in illusion and thus prevented from experiencing true reality, a oneness with God or Enlightenment, depending on which setting we are in. While it is not explicitly mentioned until the very end of the film, and then only briefly, the idea is pervasive throughout.
We do not get a comprehensive treatment of any of these philosophies, rather, we get a vision of the director's gestaltist view of awakening as it threads through these philosophies and others. No one of the ideas receives pride of place over any other, neither does the director imply that one should precede the other in understanding or that there is a specific way in which an individual goes about "waking up". For that we should be grateful. The movie provides a large menu of food for thought and leaves it up to the viewer as to which dish or dishes they would like to sample. With that...
Scene 1 - Dream is Destiny Features: Trevor Jack Brooks and Lorelei Linklater
"Dream is Destiny."
Opens with two children playing with an origami fortune teller (also known as a Cootie Catcher or Salt Cellar). The little girl unfolds the last piece to reveal the little boy's fortune, Dream is Destiny. After learning his fortune the boy gets up, wanders toward the drive way and nearing the vehicle parked there begins to float away. The implication is that this is our main character, Wiley Wiggin, at a younger age. There is a symmetry between the first scene and the last, as well as between the scenes dedicated solely to music.
Scene 2 - Tosca Tango Orchestra Glover Gill - Accordion Player Lara Hicks - Violin Player Ames Asbell - Violin Player Leigh Mahoney - Viola Player Sara Nelson - Cello Player Jeanine Attaway - Piano Player Erik Grostic - Bass Player In this brief scene we are introduced to the musicians who provided the soundtrack as we watch them at a rehearsal. Most of the music is provided by the Tosca Tango Orchestra, two songs are provided by the smaller group Grover Tango. This scene seems to serve no other purpose than to introduce us to the musicians and make us aware of the music through the rest of the film. For that, it is (still) a highly entertaining scene.
Scene 3 - Anchors Aweigh (The Boatisattva) Marta Banda, Wiley Wiggins, Bill Wise and Richard Linklater
"The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure, while always arriving."
The first thing to note in this scene is Wiley's pleasant distraction with the girl seated by the pay phones. This is a common enough dream element, helping the audience to participate more easily. The dream is moving in one direction while a small element within it m
