Waking Life

Waking Life
by Bob Sabiston, Richard Linklater

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DVD Cover Information

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Anamorphic; Animated; Subtitled; Color; Dolby; NTSC

Movie Reviews of Waking Life

Movie Review: Slacker, plus or minus a little something
Summary: 5 Stars

But, in terms of the story, "Waking Life" falls a little short of Linklater's brilliant feature debut. If you've seen and absorbed "Slacker" as many times as I have, you can clearly see the roots of this film with one viewing. It's a return to the original inspiration, with a nod to the commercial perspiration (a la Delpy and Hawke). The familiar Austin backdrops remain visible to the discerning eye: the Drag, the Capitol, the UT Campus, and the trendy coffee-houses. Several characters from "Slacker" make an appearance as well, sometimes in similiar roles, sometime radically shifted. Linklater attempts more narrative coherence in "Waking Life" by casting the impossible-to-dislike Wiley as a central protagonist around whom the chaos revolves, but it's the chaos itself that's not as interesting. It just doesn't hit as hard in the post-Terence-Mc-Kenna age.

There are cogent discussions (by a UT professor on the positive and pragmatic modes of Existentialism, a spiritual linguist on "Byzantine" discourse semantics, by a crackpot driving emcee on post-capitalist revolutionism, and by a redheaded pixie on the ant-like behavior of socialized humans). There are also the moments of violence that Linklater has always felt the need to foreground, but in WL they are sometimes handled not as skillfully. And, inevitably, there are some quite banal, repetitive, or otherwise not-so-hot ideas and emotions being tossed around. It seems as though the characters are trying too hard, the script is too tight (whether consciously or not), and the result is a series of "my twenty cents" moments rather than a story that emerges from a true creative chaos.

All of that aside, the film will indeed make you think and perhaps even dream. Give it a chance. The messages within "Waking Life" are essential as an antidote to consumer culture. If the experience of the film opens doors, writes question marks, and begs us to dream just a little bit more, then it has done its due. The struggle of maintaining one's dignity and individualism within an increasingly complex universe is the essential one faced by both everyman and the intellectual who doesn't simply want to cave into the forces of late capitalist culture. Reinjecting humanity, creativity, and even magic into our everyday life is the film's urgent message to me, and I think that message is communicated quite well. If, for example, we can take the film's own embedded interpretation of the filmic experience itself as a "holy moment" (rather than holding it to the same standards of judgment as we do written discourse), then perhaps my criticms are beside the point.

All in all, I am glad the real Linklater is back. When someone pushes the edge as hard as he does with this film, and pulls it off with confidence and panache, he deserves our support and kudos for a long time to come. He certainly has mine.

Summary of Waking Life

As he attempts to figure out what separates dreams from reality, the protagonist (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) hears an earful from everyone he stumbles upon. Ramblings range from the scholarly (Linklater's former college professor Robert C. Solomon gives a monologue) to the banal (of which there are plenty). Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Adam Goldberg all get animated cameos, basically playing themselves. The dream-centered dialogues eventually grow mind-numbing, but that's OK; the animation steals the show. Each frame of the movie, which was first shot with live actors, was painted over, and the process renders a distorted and trippy collage of sights and sounds. Linklater's film is ultimately quite poignant, but, as with any good journey, you'll need to sit through some fairly tedious moments before reaching the destination. --Jason Verlinde