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Clean animation + forced philosophical ramblings = a headache. No, actually headaches aren’t this insufferable, waking life = brain damage for lunatics. If only the animators were Japanese or something. And I thought I’d land on another Mind Game (which basically is everything this movie tries to do amplified to its full potential plus a little bit of extra special stuff), but this was unfortunately not. I guess the talk about evolution speeding up or your brain functioning a few minutes after you die were interesting. Vivre sa Vie, now thats cinema doing philosophy right.

Celebrated American independent filmmaker Richard Linklater (“The Newton Boys” & “SubUrbia”) makes something of a return to his roots with this non-narrative animation, highly reminiscent of “Slacker”, his debut feature, which premiered at the 17th Sundance Film Festival and picked up awards at the 58th Venice International Film Festival.

The free-form structure is mostly just the unnamed main character (Wiley Wiggins), perpetually trapped in a lucid dream state occasionally punctuated by false awakenings, dealing with a lot of people who are exposing him to information and ideas, about such postmodern topics as existentialism, evolution, film theory, and even lucid dreaming, which seem vaguely familiar.

’90s cyberculture blogger and sometime actor Wiley Wiggins reunites with his “Dazed and Confused” director for this unusual lead performance which requires him to remain pretty much ‘that’ as he is exposed to a barrage of ideas while other Linklater stalwarts Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt, Louis Black, Kim Krizan and Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprising their “Before Sunrise” roles.

On hand to supply the aforementioned barrage of ideas are a cross section of the great and the good including pop culture icons Speed Levitch and Steven Prince, beyond far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, academics Eamonn Healy, Louis H. Mackey, Robert C. Solomon, David Sosa, and fellow filmmakers Steven Soderbergh, Caveh Zahedi as well as Linklater himself.

The self-taught director revisits many of the themes of his feature debut but he does it in a startling fresh and original way with the deployment of the “interpolated rotoscoping” system developed by art director Bob Sabiston and brought to disconcerting life by an army of animators, including Wiley Wiggins, who ensure the visual style matches the free form meanderings of the non-plot.

The idiosyncratic animated visuals are doubtless the films big draw card, and while it is difficult to find oneself completely buying into the sophomoric intellectual masturbation of the protagonists, it is also almost impossible not to get carried along by the highly artistic renderings and the nuevo tango soundtrack of Tosca Tango Orchestra which cover them.

“Don’t worry about colouring within the lines.”

Dear Mr. Linklater,
I think it is a lie on your part to say that you made the movie Waking Life. I also think that it is not a lie on our part to attribute the movie to you. I think that the only lie possible on our part is to say that we have watched it. We can merely say with certainty that we have viewed it. Viewed it multiple times, if that is so.
I, personally, have viewed it twice. I, personally, am going to view it again. And again. And again. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. No, never ad nauseum.
I, after having viewed it twice, have many, many thoughts about this movie. Reproducing them here would be pointless, because they are, in their own way, as sprawled out as your movie, or this movie that we attribute to you.
Not producing them here, however, would be counter-productive. Because the reason I write is to communicate my take on whatever it is I’m writing on. I, in fact, think that communicating my take is so important that I have been known to ignore better points, for the sole reason that they were not my points. That is also why I make it clear everywhere – from the name of my blog to the meat of my introduction – that it is my take that you are looking at.
I, of course, won’t be mailing this letter to you. I, after all, am just a character in your extended dream. I think it is a curious choice for me to discuss the reasons for my writing, and writing this, in what purports to be a review of your movie.
All I want to say is: thank you, for giving us this. This movie, obviously, raises many questions, and answers fewer. But this is the movie that I can say taught me that it’s okay to broadcast the question that I do have, no matter how stupid. Not that I ever hesitated. So, what am I thanking you for? I don’t know, but I know that this may be the most important movie of the generation. Why? I’m not sure, but I know subsequent viewings will hold the answers.
Just like the boy could hold on in the face of everything around him telling him there was no point but the man chose to go up, into a state of enlightened drifting, you have brought back, here, that very important thing that we’ve lost: that concern that marked out the hippies and the rest of the sixties’ counterculture. The same hippies that went and learnt natural farming with Masanobu Fukuoka, and the same ones that gave us the divine music of The Beatles.
But, you’ve also lost out on the disconnect from life that negatively marked these people out. Your hero, the man played by Wiley Wiggins, chooses to drift, like a hippie, but drift in the state of being enlightened that he is in a dream, which is the choice open to most of my generation. You have shown us that it is good to take the path offered by enlightenment.
It doesn’t matter that you can’t know. The important thing is to ask. All your people, they ask. The old man wonders, seriously considers, being able, in the near future, to see evolution taking place. This sounds absurd, but it is the hope that is important. Your middle-aged woman is happy about change. My generation, we are happy about change. Exclusively in the forward direction. As long as we don’t have to change inside, as long as we can say that it is too big for us… it is true when the whiny-sounding kid says that it’s all happened before.
Of course, you understand, all that I’ve said is bullshit. But the best of bullshit. Bullshit that has come with feeling. Feeling, yes, but, more importantly, understanding that it is bullshit. Some of what your characters say can be classified as bullshit, but that is the other best of bullshit: it’s plausible bullshit. Some more of what your characters say, like the philosophy professor about existentialism, is the very opposite of bullshit.
But that, again, is not important. It is only important that they said it. It is only important, further, that you collected all this and put it in a movie, a movie that seems to end just before catharsis, between the swell of the music and the bigger swell that would be catharsis, but casting back your auditory mind reminds you that all that can possibly happen now is the addition of another instrument into the fray, like has always happened. It is true to the movie that your musician appears to say that it should sound wavy, due to being slightly out of tune.
And, thank you for those visuals, for collecting the fears of a whole generation about a decision they are supposed to make between apathy and a waking life, and showing – to a complete extent – the waking life. The waking life, after all, is as unsteady as you show it. Borders shift, arguments waver, philosophies confound, thoughts take you to unvisited regions of life, and we always try to connect, try to reach our own holy moments.
Thank you, finally, for giving us this, this precise language to discuss the lack of language that our collective intelligence has taken us too.
One of the generation,
Ronak M Soni.
PS: Please understand that most of what I’ve said is bullshit, but I’ve learnt enough from you to not know better than to broadcast it.
PPS: I have one little tiff with your movie; by repeating an idea relating directly to your hero’s predicament, you have made it too clear what has happened to him.
PPPS: That’s just a little tiff. I ought to end with a thank you.

this movie blew my mind when i was a wee 15 year around the time it came out. my friend lend it to me on dvd and i felt i was being fucked in the brain (in a good way) by something powerful. Although looking back on it now, the short conversations seem fleeting, the ideas all kind of whither out.. The animation is innovative, but not fantastic. Regardless, it’s a perfect introduction to film to a teenager, believe me. I’m going to show this movie to my kids when I have them.