Waking Life (DVD)

Waking Life has to be one of the most original films ever made, but that's hardly an original comment! It just flows across you and allows you to sink into the most deliciously trippy 2 hours you can have without drugs. Some have said that there is no plot, actually there is, but it is so subtle that it drifts past you without really making it's presence felt, until the end when it hits you with the gentle touch of a spring shower. The animation veers from so life-life you think it's the original footage, to full-blown psychedelia without producing glaring contrasts and the steam-of consciousness/modern thought dialogue doesn't seem at all false or ...  Read the complete review

Waking Life is a 2001 animated movie written and directed by Richard Linklater. The animation itself employs a technique called 'Rotoscoping' in which real footage is edited to look like a cartoon. You may have seen this style used before in 'A Scanner Darkly.' The film is a highly philosophical piece and follows a lucid dream experienced by a young man, in which he talks to characters played by real philosophers, professors and scientists about such metaphysical issues as the nature of reality, free will, existentialism and posthumanism. There are also a handful of popular actors thrown in, mainly just doing cameos. These include Ethan Hawke, Nicky Katt and ...  Read the complete review

A twenty something (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) shambles around his neighbourhood talking to a variety of people on their philosophies of life. It soon becomes apparent that he is dreaming (or is he?) and this allows him to eavesdrop on other folk and their thoughts. Yes, that's the plot. There are two components, the dialogue and the eye popping animation. This film is an excuse to present as large a range of intellectual conversation on screen as possible. Someone on the IMDb has described it as "My Dinner with Andre meets Yellow Submarine". I disagree it's "My Dinner with Andre meets Slacker meets Ralph ...  Read the complete review

Just occasionally, someone comes along and makes a film that is utterly different to just about everything else out there. With his latest film, director Richard Linklater, best known for Before Sunrise, has done just that, combining live action and animation to portray a dream state that is used to explore many ideas about philosophy and life. Having no real plot to speak of, the film follows a nameless protagonist (Wiley Wiggins) who wanders around talking to people. The conversations are all fairly deep discussions of that person's view of the world, about subjects such as the nature of free will, religion, freedom of speech, or love, to name just a few. ...  Read the complete review

Waking Life is the most visually engaging film that I have seen this year, directed by Richard Linklater it imitates the rotoscope technique used by the 1970's director Ralph Bakshi. The plot to this film was so loose its even existence is contentious yet this is no fault with the film as it is only because of this that the film is able to truly explore the questions at hand. Essentialy the protagonist in a constant lucid dream state and he is travelling from scene to scene engaging in the theories of philosophers, thinkers and film makers. The content covered is ridiculously broad and ranges from the power of speech, the meaning of life, lucid dreaming and ...  Read the complete review