Waking Life
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Movie Reviews of Waking Life
Movie Review: The most important anime of the year it was produced
Summary: 5 Stars
OK WE'VE RECEIVED THE WAKE - UP CALL!!
This film begins with a boy and a girl who wake up to the reality that the city they have been spending their short time in , is really a construction nightmare.
To fix the problem , the boy decides to grow up and be a good listener. This proves to be the wisest decision he has ever made in his whole life , and as a result he gets drawn to tons of listeners and people who speak to him directly. The film is a direct attempt to implement a serious attack against the State , and in where the advancement of the consciousness shift is predicted. The film is not an attack against the State which has been set up in a manner which is easily noticeable by the authorities , or perhaps even the producers themselves. The listeners decide to rebel against the screaming silence that they have subjected themselves to , resulting in a heightened sense of self - awareness which results in serious discussions on the nature and meaning of awareness. Attempts are made to answer as many philosophical questions as possible. The result becomes one of the most celebrated animes of all time , because the anime reaches to people of all ages and every amount of individuality available. The film deals thus with the consciousness shift in where little emphasis is put on the role of construction corporations and the consequences of the abuse they have become responsible for on a mental , emotional and physical level. The film emphasizes the concept of the importance of being a good listener. The problem in this world is that people refuse to actually listen to each other. As a result , society has evolved into a construction nightmare.
Alex Jones cries out that he wants freedom - but he has sacrificed himself to the powers that he says he is rebelling against , and thus has evolved into a corporate slave who represents everything he says he has opposed. And hence all kinds of people known and unknown are studied in the film.
Finally the grown up man discovers that he has in fact died , and that he died because a meteor crashed on the city where he had been alive , or that maybe he didn't die but entered an alternative universe where he has more control. Note that Alex Jones is alone in his car , the people are simply too smart and awake and aware to be treated like sheep so he has no audience. He represents the one who doesn't want to be a listener but who thinks he is. The main character , the listener , gets drawn to all the other listeners , and everything changes around them. Suddenly they realize it is in their hands to make decisions on how to change the form or structure of the city they had been spending their lives so much in. Thus the film actually predicts that the consciousness shift which will start in 2009 will start by the collapsing of Alex Jones'reputation as a documentary maker , and will then gradually evolve , first by means of entering a stage of acceleration , later it becomes sudden as the film advances. Now everyone is talking about it , and as a result , the construction corporations have lost their power. Now it is up to the inhabitants of the city to decide how they want to change it , beginning with the prisons. Do they want the city to continue to be a prison or not? They decide to conclude that the city doesn't have to be a gulag or a prison and move on.
In this film , existentialism and other branches of philosophy journey together to create a bigger picture than the one we had gotten used to since 1999.
Movie Review: great companion piece to Dazed and Confused
Summary: 5 Stars
This is such an incredibly beautiful and thought invoking movie.A lot of the themes and topics of discussion in the movie (which is more in form like the Dialogues that were oh so vogue with philosophers in the old days like Plato and so on) are by no means the sort of things you would overhear in a Mc Donald's or at the Blockbuster; discussions that if you were to bring them up with your friends at the bar it would most definitely sour the mood of those around you: reality, memory, the conflict of science and religion, death, and so on. There is most often too much white noise and distraction in our lives to bring out the things in the open that a lot of us think of within ourselves, and they end up being our pretentious little thoughts that have no true beginnings and endings. The ramblings of a consciousness that drifts towards a final destination, yet fades away in darkness- and so on. And so on.
And so on- this movie is often remarked as being pretentious: going to many places at one time; never exactly sure what it's saying, so it says everything it can. Yet this is a film which explores those things in life which we may never have a hope of answering. How can you know death till you are dead? You can be as poetic and eloquent as you want, use your metaphors- you do not know a thing. All you can do is talk, and talk, and talk. And that is exactly what this movie does: talk.
What truly disgusts me is that the Academy Awards (a "ceremony" which is far beyond that line of self-parody and is now bargain-binned into oblivion) overlooked this film in the Animated Feature category. I say overlooked loosely since it is obvious that this film is far beyond the minds of those who take such award shows seriously... No, how can you suggest that the nature of reality is of no importance to the average person?? Do those who hold no interests in art have no anxiety towards dying, as well? Is there any less angst in some then others? This is a movie for every man, woman and child, about the things which we all wonder within and keep like a secret to ourselves. Have you ever wondered if a body sleeps and never wakes up after it dies? Of course you have. We cannot all be Zen masters, and hypnotize ourselves into not being afraid of what lies beyond the dark. This is a movie that brings those things out- and has been ostracized for it. This is a movie (very much like Dazed and Confused) about being trapped and, triumphantly, escaping into... who knows?
The last frame of the film, where the hero floats into blurring light is the end of this life. An end of bodily functions like intelligence which only add to the pretentiousness of living. It is an end that has a beginning. Raymond Moody, who has spent the better part of his life studying people on their deathbeds, those who were terminally dead for a few minutes, and so on- said something like "I don't really know what happens after you die. I don't think there is anything that really gives the experience justice you can say about dieing. After all these years, the closest I ever got to defining it is that its like watching TV for a long time, and then changing the channel- and even that by no means even scratches the surface of the true experience." Poe also said "All of this just seems as but a dream within a dream"
Movie Review: Waking Life - awaken the mind!
Summary: 5 Stars
Why do we dream?Is it just a way for our brain to sift through the sights and sounds and smells and other sensations we experience in day to day life, and pack them away?
Or is there a deeper meaning? Are dreams really messages coming from the subconcious, trying to force themselves into our awareness?
Are they prophecies of events to come?
Or are dreams merely another reality, one that works much like this one except that we have no set limits, and we can see the results of our choices so much sooner?
And when you have gotten all that you can gather from the dream, whatever its purpose may be, do you decide to go on to another dream, or wake up?
For that matter, how do you wake up?
Waking Life (2001, rated R) broaches the subject in such a way that even the most intelligently skeptical cynic has to sit down and consider the possibilities. The film first grabs your attention with the surrealistic visuals, that make the viewer think of something he once dreamed about. The photographers filmed the flick digitally in the everyday Hollywood way, and the graphic artists worked their magic. The viewer sits, captivated by the individuality of the filmwork, and notices almost immediately how real the soundtrack is, in contrast with the absurdity of the visuals. As like in a dream, where one can't always believe what he sees, but can always trust what he hears.
After Waking Life was released in October 2001, Bob Sabiston, the graphic designer, was nominated for Digital Effects Artist of the Year for the 2001 American Film Institute Awards. The film was also nominated for IFP/West Independent Spirit Awards' Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, in 2002. Waking Life won Best Experimental Film from the National Society of Film Critics, and Best Animated Film from the New York Film Critics Circle, both in 2001.
But awards don't say much about personal impact. This really is a movie that, to get the best feel for, a person has to watch. One cannot judge it by what someone else says. The film takes leaps and twists and loops where one could not anticipate... just like a dream would. Every last detail, including a mosquito, has it's very specific purpose, and it's up to the viewer to decide what it is. Waking Life takes place in a world with no beginning and no end, and where everyone speaks in quotes of Sartre, Kierkegaarde, Kafka, and Camus... and you know exactly what they all mean. At times sacrilegious, and others... just plain religious, this is a very thought-provoking, philosophizing work of art.
You really should find out for yourself just how unbelievably moving this piece is, but... if you need any more convincing, here's a quote from Roger Ebert:
"I have seen "Waking Life" three times now. I want to see it again--not to master it, or even to remember it better (I would not want to read the screenplay), but simply to experience all of these ideas, all of this passion, the very act of trying to figure things out. It must be depressing to believe that you have been supplied with all the answers, that you must believe them and to question them is disloyal, or a sin. Were we given minds in order to fear their questions?"
Movie Review: Linklater becomes an artist
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a brave movie, and for me, it struck VERY close to home (as you'll see below). What might at first seem like playful pretentions - the animation, the intense monologues connected by lethargic ramblings - actually turn out to be not just artifice but ART. And I capitalize the word ART intentionally. And what I mean by ART is this: its gimmicks, its obtuseness, its force, its visual and verbal games all turn out to be valuable and significant symbols. It is animated for a reason. It is alternately ambling and in your face for a reason. It is mercurial and personal and universal for a reason. And as with all good art, they are good reasons. "Waking Life" poignantly explores useful and ingenious perspectives of how we perceive the world both personally and impersonally, feeling at once fully aware and half asleep, sometimes engaged and sometimes apathetic, trying to make sense of what others think makes sense to them. This theme is central to the film, I think, and it is profound: how do we make sense of what others think makes sense to them?Let me pose that question again: how do we make sense of what others think makes sense to them? What makes sense objectively? And what keeps us feeling sporadically nonsensical and thus alone in our thoughts, whether or not we're asleep or awake? How are we together? And how are we alone?
Like Linklater, I spent lots of years in central Austin. I saw "Slacker" when it came out and realized I was surrounded, at the corner of 15th and Nueces, by places where that radically quirky movie had been filmed. Also like Linklater, I immersed myself in the intellectual riches of UT, the University of Texas, that bastion of not-so-ivory towers that grows at the northern end of Linklater's cinematic neighborhood. (Indeed, I could swear that he used my bare-board duplex with the white French doors and that white swinging door for the interiors of the protagonist's home in Waking Life. What a STRANGE sense of deja vu /'am I dreaming' THAT sent through me!) The point is, I feel Linklater has successfully captured that central Austin milieu successfully, in its tawdry and brainy extremes, outwardly and in my mind... How am I connected to you? How am I alone?
And onto that milieu, Linklater has added a rich tapestry of the profound themes I mentioned above. (A cross between "Waiting for Godot" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"?) That all those words can wear you out means it's worth a few go 'rounds at least.
I happened to see the VHS version of this film. But it is the kind of film that immediately makes a curious or enthusiastic (or mystified) viewer want to hear what the director and production staff have to say. It is, like "What Dreams May Come?", "Pleasantville", and "Moulin Rouge", a film where behind-the-scenes explorations of screenplay development, technique and production decisions prove fascinating. So I'm getting the DVD to have access to all of that additional material. It will be worth it, as I plan to encourage my friends and movie/idea loving acquaintances to see and think about the artistry that is "Waking Life."
Movie Review: A triumph
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Linklater is one of the great independent directors working today. No matter what you think of his work, you cannot deny that he is an original voice. I don't like all his movies, but I invariably look forward to trying out each new one. Waking Life is one of the good ones. To start with, its very existence is a sign of this man's imagination. He films the whole thing and edits it into a feature. Now at this point, most directors would consider their film finished. But not Rick Linklater. No, now he gives it to Bob Sabiston at LineResearch to totally cover over with rotoscoping animation using Sabiston's own software. So, basically, he's made two films in one. And we're the luckier for it.
If you've seen Slacker, you'll be familiar with the style. In that film, one scene blends into another through the use a minor character from one scene (often no more than a walk-on) becoming the focus of the next scene. Well, here the blend is not so logical. Several scenes appear to be dreams from which our hero (played by Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused) awakens at the end. Only even his awakening appears to be part of the dream. Eventually, he realizes that he is not really waking up, and this begins to disturb him. (How to tell when you're dreaming--and make the most of it--becomes the subject of one conversation.) But he continues to meet up with people, often trying to interrupt their monologues with his own questions about his problem. Until he finally runs into a guy playing pinball (Linklater) who tells him simply to "wake up."
But does he?
Animating this film was the best idea Linklater had. Often one's mind wanders during these characters' monologues (several of them just aren't that interesting), but the animation surrounding them keeps your interest. It not only saves the film, but makes it better. It transcends itself. Instead of becoming Slacker meets My Dinner with Andre, it turns into art--that rarest of creatures, cinematic art.
Conversations that would be as dull as a dormitory-kitchen knife are enlivened. Concepts not understood become graspable through the use of illustrative drawings. Even the actors themselves (primarily amateurs including several professors from the University of Texas at Austin) are shown in a new light through the eyes of the animators. (One wonders what they thought of the animators' taking license with their likenesses.) My favorites were the "human interaction" scene, the "holy moment" scene, the story told in the bark, and the above "pinball" scene, where Linklater tells the film's most interesting story about Phillip K. Dick's discovery after writing one of his novels.
Have your own "holy moment" and immerse yourself in the dream world of Waking Life.
(Note on the DVD: This baby is loaded. Making ofs, interviews, several commentaries, and a very compelling animated short film called "Snack and Drink" featuring an autistic boy. Very educational regarding the process of bringing this movie through its paces and very entertaining as well. Well worth the price.)