| Waking Life | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Richard Linklater |
| Written by | Richard Linklater |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | Wiley Wiggins |
| Cinematography |
|
| Edited by | Sandra Adair |
| Music by | Glover Gill |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight Pictures |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 101 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2 million |
| Box office | $3.2 million[2] |
Waking Life is a 2001 Americanadult animated drama film written and directed byRichard Linklater. The film explores a wide range ofphilosophical issues, including the nature ofreality,dreams andlucid dreams,consciousness, themeaning of life,free will, andexistentialism.[3] The series of insightful philosophical discussions at the core of the film are progressed by a young man who wanders through a succession of dreamlike realities wherein he encounters a series of interesting characters.
The entire film was digitallyrotoscoped. It contains several parallels to Linklater's 1991 filmSlacker.Ethan Hawke andJulie Delpy reprise their characters fromBefore Sunrise (1995) in one scene.[4][5]Waking Life premiered at the2001 Sundance Film Festival, and was released on October 19, 2001, where it received critical acclaim;[6] however, it underperformed at the box office.
An unnamed young man lives an ethereal existence that lacks transitions between everyday events and eventually progresses toward anexistential crisis. He observes quietly but later participates actively inphilosophical discussions involving other characters — ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday restaurant-goers and friends — about such issues asmetaphysics,free will,social philosophy, and themeaning of life. Other scenes do not even include the protagonist's presence but rather focus on a random isolated person, a group of people, or a couple engaging in such topics from a disembodied perspective. Along the way, the film also touches uponexistentialism,situationist politics,posthumanity, the film theory ofAndré Bazin, andlucid dreaming, and makes references to various celebrated intellectual and literary figures by name.
Gradually, the protagonist begins to realize that he is living out a perpetual dream, broken up only by occasionalfalse awakenings. So far, he is mostly a passive onlooker, though this changes during a chat with a passing woman who suddenly approaches him. After she greets him and shares her creative ideas with him, he reminds himself that she is a figment of his own dreaming imagination. Afterward, he starts to converse more openly with other dream characters, but he begins to despair about being trapped in a dream.
The protagonist's final talk is with a character (played by Richard Linklater) whom he briefly encountered previously in the film. This last conversation reveals this other character's view that reality may be only a single instant that the individual interprets falsely as time (and, thus, life); that living is simply the individual's constant negation of God's invitation to becomeone with the universe; that dreams offer a glimpse into the infinite nature of reality; and that in order to be free from the illusion called life, the individual need only accept God's invitation.
The protagonist is last seen walking into a driveway when he suddenly begins to levitate, paralleling a scene at the start of the film of a floating child in the same driveway. The protagonist uncertainly reaches toward a car's handle but is too swiftly lifted above the vehicle and over the trees. He rises into the endless blue expanse of the sky until he disappears from view.
The film features appearances from a wide range of actors and non-actors, including:
In a 2001 interview, Linklater estimated that the idea for the film came "before I was even interested in film, probably 20 years ago."[7] For a while he felt the idea for the film "didn't quite work" calling it "too blunt, too realistic"[8] stating that "I think to make a realistic film about an unreality the film had to be a realistic unreality".[8] To create that visual effect, Linklater used an animation technique based onrotoscoping, in which animators overlaid the live-action footage shot by Linklater with animation that roughly approximates the images actually filmed.[9][10] Linklater employed a variety of artists, so the movie's feel continually changes, producing asurreal, shifting dreamscape.
The animators used standardApple Macintosh computers. The film was mostly produced usingRotoshop, a rotoscoping program that creates blends betweenkey frame vector shapes, which also uses virtual "layers", designed specifically for the production byBob Sabiston. Linklater used this animation method again for his 2006 filmA Scanner Darkly.
Waking Lifepremiered at theSundance Film Festival in January 2001 and was given a limited release in the United States on October 19, 2001.
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 145 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Waking Life's inventive animated aesthetic adds a distinctive visual component to a film that could easily have rested on its smart screenplay and talented ensemble cast."[11] OnMetacritic, which uses aweighted average, the film has a score of 82 out of 100 based on 31 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[6]Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, describing it as "a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas".[12] Ebert later included the film on his list of "Great Movies".[13]Lisa Schwarzbaum ofEntertainment Weekly awarded the film an "A" rating, calling it "a work of cinematic art in which form and structure pursue the logic-defying (parallel) subjects of dreaming and moviegoing,"[14] whileStephen Holden ofThe New York Times wrote it was "so verbally dexterous and visually innovative that you can't absorb it unless you have all your wits about you".[15]Dave Kehr ofThe New York Times found the film to be "lovely, fluid, funny" and stated that it "never feels heavy or over-ambitious".[3]
Conversely,J. Hoberman ofThe Village Voice felt thatWaking Life "doesn't leave you in a dream... so much as it traps you in an endless bull session".[16]Frank Lovece felt the film was "beautifully drawn" but called its content "pedantic navel-gazing".[17]
In 2018, Richard Linklater addressed the potentially controversial inclusion ofAlex Jones in the film. In an interview withIndieWire, Linklater states, "I just thought he was kind of funny." He notes that he never imagined Jones would one day be taken seriously and that at the time, he did not think much of including him.[18]
Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements,Waking Life won theNational Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film", theNew York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film", and the "CinemAvvenire" award at theVenice Film Festival for "Best Film". It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award.
The film is recognized byAmerican Film Institute in these lists:
The film was released onVHS andDVD in North America in May 2002. DVD special features included severalcommentaries, documentaries, interviews, trailers, anddeleted scenes, as well as the short filmSnack and Drink.[20] A bare-bones DVD with no special features was releasedin Region 2 in February 2003. A Blu-Ray was released in Germany and the UK.
TheWaking Life OST was performed and written by Glover Gill and theTosca Tango Orchestra, except forFrédéric Chopin'sNocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2. The soundtrack was relatively successful. Featuring thenuevo tango style, it bills itself "the 21st Century Tango". The tango contributions were influenced by the music of the Argentine "father of new tango"Astor Piazzolla.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |