Waking Life
Richard Linklater, perhaps best known for his grunge-era movie “Slacker”,
appears here to be seeking out life’s higher moments, pondering the
inexplicable stuff that gives life a mysterious quality that lies below the
surface of the mundane. It’s probably overly simplistic to suggest that Linklater had grown up from the apparent navelgazing in
“Slacker”, got married and/or had children (his young daughter has a role in
"Waking Life") or had had some other life-affirming experience before making "Waking Life". Even if this may
partly explain his attitude here, it's also true to say that in "Slacker", whose format and feel is
revisited here, there was a positive attitude in evidence, albeit not one as
pronounced as it is in "Waking Life". In both instances we are presented with a series of encounters with
articulate individuals in a rambling montage. In "Slacker", the topics that the characters are
concerned with were more disparate, and occasionally off the wall. In "Waking Life"
there is the focus of a central theme, lucid dreams, that ties things together.
On the visual side, the most striking
aspect of "Waking Life" is the artwork, which appears to be an animation on a frame by frame basis of conventionally
filmed material, all rendered in pulsating brushstrokes. The level of animation
varies, so that the ethereal quality that it gives to the characters varies too.
As well as lending an appropriate sense of quasi-reality to the proceedings,
the animation is exploited from time to time to permit the filmmakers to
add animational flourishes that complement what the
characters are saying at the time.
It’s perhaps strange
the the “message” of optimism regarding humankind's
evolution towards some kind of higher level of self-realisation and
self-awareness, both in the sense of the individual and of the population as a
whole, should be couched in a premise that involves a main character whose
ultimate dilemma is his being “stuck” in a lucid dream from which he cannot
awaken. This dilemma adds a layer of intrigue to the overall mood, the suggestion
that the character might in fact be dead crops up too.
Many of the
conversations that are played out feel as though we are joining the speakers halfway
through their respective discussions, at such a point when they are warming to their
subject and are speaking most fluently. On some occasions, the sense is more of
a prepared speech or even a sizeable quotation from some quasi-philosophical
text. Even if the fluency of the patter is occasionally so glossy as to mask
the fact that the concepts themselves are not really that challenging, and if the
animation sometimes borders on being obtrusive, there are a reasonable number
of interesting ideas kicked around, and Linklater’s
own appearance and speech is not least among these.