Waking Life Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)November 13th, 2001
IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
WAKING LIFE
R, 97 minutes
Written and Directed by Richard Linklater
WHEN, WHERE
Opens today at the Screen
"Waking Life" falls into the mind-tickling tradition of talk movies. Think "Mindwalk", think "My Dinner With Andre". But writer/director Richard Linklater ("Dazed and Confused") sets his apart by wrapping it in animation that is not like any you have ever seen.
The first step in this eye-popping process was to shoot on digital video, using live actors and real locations. The final edited product was handed over to a battalion of artists with an arsenal of computers using an innovative animation software package. The results are about as far from "Snow White" as David Lynch is from Frank Capra. Each artist took on specific characters and scenes, and painted over the digital images. The subtlety and truth of expression is mesmerizing. Different elements of each visual move on independent planes, so that a talking head may feature a mouth, eyes, ears, a mustache, teeth, nostrils, all moving independently of one another, while elements of the background take on lives and minds of their own. Sometimes the effect is minimal, sometimes extreme. The visual technique is a dynamic and essential part of the process; it usually fascinates and occasionally nauseates, like trying to read a book in a car driving along thirty miles of dirt road. There is no story, there are only situations. The predominant one involves a young man (Wiley Wiggins) who wanders through an unspecified cityscape (most of the action was shot in Austin and in New York City) and talks to people he meets – or more accurately, listens to them. Most of them propound various philosophies of reality, pouring out a profusion of ideas that carry the bracing kick of shots from a bottle. The enthusiasm and the intelligence and the sheer content of it all is exhilarating, and while the individual thoughts may not be uniformly original, the impact of the whole decidedly is.
Gradually it becomes clear that some of this is a dream, and eventually it comes to seem that it all may be a dream from which Wiggins is unable to waken. A character in one of his encounters offers a clue: "In dreams, you can’t adjust the light. If you’re not sure if it’s a dream, try flicking the light switch." There are other clues to the dream state, too; one of them is a tendency to float up into the air.
Linklater is not unmindful of the hazards of doing a movie like this. Dreams are not box office; another bizarre dream trip, David Lynch’s masterful "Mulholland Drive", is doing modest business in the shadow of inferior stuff like "Shallow Hal" and "Domestic Disturbance". Linklater has one of his characters describe a meeting between Billy Wilder and Louis Malle, who had just made what was then a high-budget move for $2.5 million. "What's it about?" Wilder asked.
"It's a dream within a dream," Malle replied.
"Then you just lost two and a half million dollars," Wilder advised him.
There is only one point in the movie that I can recall when the jittery dance of features and clothing and floating backgrounds settles down. Two characters have been discussing the concept of "the holy moment," and they decide to try to achieve one, by silently locking eyes and seeking to establish contact with each other's soul. For the length of the stare, the screen achieves a stillness that is almost holy.
On your way out, try flicking the light switch.
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