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''Waking Life'' is a 2001 American experimental adult animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality,
dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, al ...
s and
lucid dream A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment; however, this is n ...
s,
consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
, the
meaning of life The meaning of life, or the answer to the question: "What is the meaning of life?", pertains to the intrinsic value (ethics), significance of Life, living or existence in general. Many other related questions include: "Why are we here?", "Wha ...
,
free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to a ...
, and
existentialism Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning Meaning most comm ...
. It is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful
philosophical Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Som ...
discussions. The entire film was digitally rotoscoped. It contains several parallels to Linklater's 1991 film '' Slacker''.
Ethan Hawke Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor and film director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed three feature films, three off-Broadway plays, and a doc ...
and
Julie Delpy Julie Delpy (; born 21 December 1969) is a French-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, includ ...
reprise their characters from the 1995 ''
Before Sunrise ''Before Sunrise'' is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The first installment in the ''Before'' trilogy, it follows Jesse ( Ethan Hawke) and Céline ( Julie Delpy) as they mee ...
'' in one scene. ''Waking Life'' premiered at the
2001 Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 ...
, and was released on October 19, 2001, where it received critical acclaim; however, it underperformed at the box office.


Plot

An unnamed young man lives an ethereal existence that lacks transitions between everyday events and eventually progresses toward an
existential crisis In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning. Some authors also emphasize confusion about one's personal identity in their definition. Existential crises are acco ...
. He observes quietly but later participates actively in
philosophical Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Som ...
discussions involving other characters—ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday restaurant-goers and friends—about such issues as
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
,
free will Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to a ...
,
social philosophy Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social ...
, and the
meaning of life The meaning of life, or the answer to the question: "What is the meaning of life?", pertains to the intrinsic value (ethics), significance of Life, living or existence in general. Many other related questions include: "Why are we here?", "Wha ...
. 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 upon
existentialism Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning Meaning most comm ...
, situationist politics, posthumanity, the film theory of André Bazin, and
lucid dream A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment; however, this is n ...
ing, 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 occasional false 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 become one 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.


Cast

*
Wiley Wiggins Wiley Wiggins (born ) is an American game designer and film actor. A native of Austin, Texas, he is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, who was a member of Janis Joplin's early band, The Waller Creek Boys. At the age of 16, Wiggins starred in Richa ...
plays the protagonist. The film features appearances from a wide range of actors and non-actors, including: * Eamonn Healy *
Timothy "Speed" Levitch Timothy "Speed" Levitch (; born July 9, 1970) is an American actor, tour guide, poet, speaker, philosopher, author and voice actor. The name "Speed" was given to him by a childhood friend in high school. Levitch has appeared in multiple films an ...
*
Adam Goldberg Adam Charles Goldberg (born October 25, 1970) is an American character actor, filmmaker, musician, and photographer. Known for his supporting roles in film and television, Goldberg has appeared in films such as '' Dazed and Confused'', '' Saving ...
* Nicky Katt *
Ethan Hawke Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor and film director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed three feature films, three off-Broadway plays, and a doc ...
as Jesse *
Julie Delpy Julie Delpy (; born 21 December 1969) is a French-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and singer-songwriter. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, includ ...
as Céline *
Steven Prince ''American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince'' is a 1978 documentary film, documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Its subject is Scorsese's friend Steven Prince, known for his small role as Easy Andy, the gun salesman in ''Taxi Driver''. Prince ...
*
Caveh Zahedi Caveh Zahedi (; born April 29, 1960) is an American film director and actor. Early years Zahedi was born in Washington, D.C., to Iranian immigrant parents. He studied philosophy at Yale University. Upon graduation, Zahedi moved to Paris, Fr ...
*
Otto Hofmann Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', ''Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fro ...
* Richard Linklater *
Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right and alt-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas, which the Genesis Communications Network broadcast ...
*
Kim Krizan Kim Krizan (born November 1, 1961) is an American writer and actress best known for originating the story and characters in the "Before Sunrise" trilogy with her writing on ''Before Sunrise'' (1995) and ''Before Sunset'' (2004), for which she was ...
* Louis H. Mackey * Steven Soderbergh * David Sosa * Robert C. Solomon *
Steve Brudniak Steve Brudniak (born April 9, 1961, Topeka, Kansas) is an American artist, actor, filmmaker and musician. Known for highly crafted and unusual assemblage sculpture, his visual art career spans nearly four decades. His music, acting and filmmaking ...


Production

In a 2001 interview, Linklater estimated that the idea for the film came "before I was even interested in film, probably 20 years ago." For a while he felt the idea for the film "didn't quite work" calling it "too blunt, too realistic" stating that "I think to make a realistic film about an unreality the film had to be a realistic unreality". To create that visual effect, Linklater used an animation technique based on rotoscoping, in which animators overlaid the live-action footage shot by Linklater with animation that roughly approximates the images actually filmed. Linklater employed a variety of artists, so the movie's feel continually changes, producing a surreal, shifting dreamscape. The animators used standard
Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software ...
computers. The film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a rotoscoping program that creates blends between key frame vector shapes, which also uses virtual "layers", designed specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston. Linklater used this animation method again for his 2006 film '' A Scanner Darkly''.


Release

''Waking Life'' premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...
in January 2001 and was given a limited release in the United States on October 19, 2001.


Reception

On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
, 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." On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which uses a
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
, the film has a score of 82 out of 100 based on 31 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' gave the film four stars out of four, describing it as "a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas". Ebert later included the film on his list of "Great Movies". Lisa Schwarzbaum of ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cult ...
'' 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," while Stephen Holden of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote it was "so verbally dexterous and visually innovative that you can't absorb it unless you have all your wits about you". Dave Kehr of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' found the film to be "lovely, fluid, funny" and stated that it "never feels heavy or over-ambitious". Conversely, J. Hoberman of ''
The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...
'' felt that ''Waking Life'' "doesn't leave you in a dream... so much as it traps you in an endless bull session". Frank Lovece felt the film was "beautifully drawn" but called its content "pedantic navel-gazing". In 2018, Richard Linklater addressed the potentially controversial inclusion of
Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American far-right and alt-right radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas, which the Genesis Communications Network broadcast ...
in the film. In an interview with
IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...
, 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 didn't think much of including him. Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements, ''Waking Life'' won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film", the
New York Film Critics Circle The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) is an American film critic organization founded in 1935 by Wanda Hale from the New York ''Daily News''. Its membership includes over 30 film critics from New York-based daily and weekly newspapers, maga ...
award for "Best Animated Film", and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the
Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...
for "Best Film". It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award. The film is recognized by
American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Lead ...
in these lists: * 2008 – AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Animation Film


Home media

The film was released on DVD in North America in May 2002. Special features included several commentaries, documentaries, interviews, trailers, and deleted scenes, as well as the short film ''Snack and Drink''. A bare-bones DVD with no special features was released in Region 2 in February 2003. A Blu-Ray was released in Germany and the UK.


Soundtrack

The ''
Waking Life OST ''Waking Life'' is the soundtrack album from the 2001 film '' Waking Life''. All but two of the tracks were composed by Glover Gill and performed by the Tosca Tango Orchestra. "Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2" was originally composed by Frà ...
'' was performed and written by Glover Gill and the
Tosca Tango Orchestra The Tosca Tango Orchestra is a joint effort between various Austin, Texas-based musicians founded by Glover Gill, in collaboration with The Tosca String Quartet, Luis Guerra, and Jeanine Attaway in 1997. The group performs original compositions ...
, except for
Frédéric Chopin Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leadin ...
's Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2. The soundtrack was relatively successful. Featuring the nuevo 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 Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (, ; March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer, bandoneon player, and arranger. His works revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed '' nuevo tango'', incorporating elements f ...
.


See also

* Dream argument * Dream art * Oneironautics * Simulated reality


References


Bibliography

* *


External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Waking Life 2001 films 2001 animated films 2000s American animated films 2001 drama films American avant-garde and experimental films Animated drama films Films about dreams Magic realism films 2000s English-language films Fox Searchlight Pictures films Existentialist films Animated films directed by Richard Linklater Rotoscoped films Films about philosophy Films shot in Texas Films shot in Austin, Texas Films shot in San Antonio Metaphysical fiction films 2000s avant-garde and experimental films American adult animated films Before trilogy American independent films 2001 independent films