Waking Life (2001)

Idea: On his way home from the train station, a young man (Wiley Wiggans) accepts a ride from a guy driving a boat car. After he gets out, he is hit by a car. When he wakes up, he discovers that he isn't really awake at all but in a dream state. Unlike the average lucid dream, the more he harder he tries to wake up, the less control he has over what happens in his dreams.

I didn't really give anything away there, I assure you. It's not really about the plot anyway.

So, the film was shot entirely on video cameras, mostly handheld, then rotoscope-animated on Mac G4 computers and later transferred to 35mm film. A bit technobabble-y, yes, but it helps to basically understand that what you are seeing is animation on top of live action. Otherwise it can be a little weird.

A technological marvel, yes, and a sight to behold aesthetically, but the rest of what Richard Linklater (writer/director, of course) is questionable at best. At first glance it seems like a deep and mysterious gem, as though the secrets of the universe are revealed to you. And they are, in a sense. People are telling the main character much more than they ever would in real life, answering questions that no one ever bothers to ask. More than that, he is somehow privy to private conversations that he wouldn't be part of if not for his (my best guess) coma.

In fact, I thought I was going to have to watch this movie again and maybe even a third time in order to start to understand it. And maybe that's still true. But I did feel up to writing about it after I had a few days to really digest it.

The reality is that while the movie contains new theories that I had yet to come across about life, death, and the meaning of existence, a lot of it seems like the pseudo-deep things we all come up with when we stay up way too late and veer away from the superficial.

And maybe that's exactly what this movie is - an attempt to get away from the superficial. By concealing every speaker's identity with animation, their speech becomes more important than their visage. It certainly helps give the film that crisp, close feeling of a 4 am talk.

Strangelove once said that universities breed liberalism (he meant that in a complimentary way, of course). That kind of liberty of the mind plays a large role in Linklater's politics that infuse the dialogue and my subsequent interpretation of it.

While intensely quotable and full of ideas to ponder, I'm not sure to what extent I am willing to assign true meaning to this picture yet. I will have to put it away for a few months, six even, come back to it, and watch again to understand what I saw. Until then, let it speak for itself: "Yes, it is empty, but with such fullness." B