Waking Life: Movie Review (2008)

Written and directed by Richard Linklater. Animation direction by Bob Sabiston. 99 minutes. Rated R.

“In life, the trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. If you can do that, you can do anything.”

Or so says a character in Richard Linklater's Waking Life."

But what happens if you never learn that trick? Or if you don’t believe your dreams are your destiny? Or if you can’t get behind the idea that--according to this film--we’re all telepathically sharing our experiences and that the greatest mistake you can make is to believe you’re alive?

The non-answers to those questions--and many others like them--are tucked within the seams of this endlessly trippy film, a surreal, metaphysical romp that stands as one fresh, bracing movie.

Sometimes brilliant yet other times maddening, “Waking Life” is an animated film that’s an exercise in the fusion of illusion and reality; it’s not for those seeking a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie. Indeed, “Waking Life” is alive with so many provocative ideas and theories about life, living, death and the meaning of dreams, it can't be viewed with a trace of passivity.

Together with his art director, Bob Sabiston, Linklater has crafted a dizzying maelstrom of philosophies wrapped around stunning images reminiscent of those in a graphic novel.
As his characters plunge into the meaning of life and the mysteries of the world (and beyond), Linklater’s movie literally burns, shimmers and jitters with life itself.

What he’s created is a near-seamless marriage between the medium of film and the content of a story. Using Sabiston’s interpolated rotoscoping software, he’s taken live-action video and painted over it frame by frame, thus generating an impressionist’s dream from the roots of reality--which is exactly where Linklater suggests we live.

“Waking Life” doesn’t have a plot. It follows a young man played by Wiley Wiggins who, unable to wake from a dream, meets along his fantastic dream-journey a whole host of types ranting and pontificating about “what it all means.”

Most of those he encounters are played by non-actors, but Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (of Linklater’s “Before Sunrise”), and director Stephen Soderberg and Linklater himself show up to offer their own ideas about the workings of the universe.

As serious as the film sounds, it sometimes has a biting sense of humor, both in its animation, which can be wild, and in its dialogue, which is more than willing to poke fun at itself while reinforcing the idea that “the ongoing wow is happening right now.”

Grade: A