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Special Features
- 'Greatest Hits' from the live action version
- Bob Sabiston's animation software tutorial
- Deleted live action scenes
- Selections for Linklater's 'audition tapes'
- Featurette
- Sundance Channel special
- Short films by Sabiston
- -"Snack and Drink"
- -"Willy Wiggins Test"
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
Product Description
Customer Reviews
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.)
It's a movie that would not have worked nearly as well as live action. The realism would detract from the intellectual dreaminess of the ideas. Linklater's animation technique, which uses computers to paint on top of live digital video footage, is just right for this film. It is as close as I've ever seen to having visuals actually embody the ideas being expressed verbally by the characters. A new, exciting alternative to the documentary as a visual medium for ideas, and just as credible an approach as that of, say, David Lynch, for reproducing the sensation of dream. The animation awakens the reality just as the ideas in the film rouse your mind.
Finally, it's a movie that will inspire a polarized reaction. The person I saw the film with stood up halfway into the film and left, unable to stand it. The greatest films seem to inspire such reaction. I left the theater and stood on the sidewalk outside, thinking.
But I don't mean to mislead someone and intimate that this is a movie that solely addresses the head, and not the imagination or the heart. It does. Visually, this is one of the most remarkable films I have ever seen. Most individuals anticipating seeing the film are probably already aware that Linklater initially filmed live actors in the movie's scenes, and then collaborated with others in painting over the images to create a remarkable animated film. The result is delightful. Visually, the movie doesn't look like anything else ever made. But the film isn't just gorgeous to look at and stimulating intellectually: it is funny. Nearly ever scene results in laughter, and interpenetrating nearly every discussion, no matter how serious, is humor.
Apart from the visual aspect of the film, WAKING LIFE bears a recognizable resemblance to SLACKER. If you had seen SLACKER and then went to see this one without knowing who directed it, you would be identify both as the work of the same director within a few minutes. In fact, one of the earliest scenes in the movie strongly echoes the first scene in SLACKER. In that movie, a guy at a bus station (played by Linklater himself), catches a cab and begins talking to the cab driver about his dream life. He explains his theory that dreams might be a window into an alternative reality, and tells him that in a different reality, he might have talked and gotten to know a woman he saw at the bus station. WAKING LIFE begins with the main character exchanging glances with a woman at a bus station, then going to catch a cab (though he ends up with a ride from a very unusual individual), and then the rest of the movie is an essay on the nature of dreams.
Though SLACKER and WAKING LIFE are stylistically similar, in the end they are very different films. While both are somewhat episodic, with little (as in WAKING LIFE) or no (SLACKER) plot to speak of, and while both appear to be set primarily in Austin, Texas (I spotted one scene that seemed to have been filmed along the River Walk in San Antonio and another on the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC), and both contain a succession of professional and amateur actors, WAKING LIFE differs in two major ways, apart from the visual. First, WAKING LIFE, despite the variety of character, primarily focuses on the concerns of one young man. Second, while episodic in structure, WAKING LIFE is structured by the constant questioning of the nature of waking reality versus dreaming reality. SLACKER was basically about nothing; WAKING LIFE is definitely about something.
This movie is not for everyone. If you don't like ideas and talking about ideas, you might find this film tedious. It is animated, but it bears utterly no resemblance to a Disney movie. And it really doesn't have much of a plot. If you require a definite and involved plot, this movie won't be to your liking. For those who love extraordinary visual imagery and brilliant conversation about ideas, this movie will be a rare treat.
Slight correction: one character in the movie says that Kierkegaard's last words were: "Sweep me up." This quote is, in fact, based on something Kierkegaard reputedly said a month or so before he died. He was at a gathering at someone's house when he collapsed physically. As people gathered around him, he quipped, "Let it lie. The maid will sweep it up in the morning." He soon entered a hospital and died a month later, apparently of a staph infection. I am not aware of any recorded final words.
Definitely one of my favorite films of all time.
