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Waking Life is less a conventional 'movie' than a series of
philosophical mini-essays on the meaning of existence, structured around a
wandering 'dreamer' figure (Wiggins). The whole film is 'enhanced' by
having every image turned into a kind of cartoon, with each section
handled by a different animator. The uneven results will provoke the full
range of responses: Waking Life will be embraced and loved, avoided and
hated in equal measure. A litmus phrase: "At night, I go salsa dancing
with my own confusion." Intrigued? Welcome in. Annoyed? Best to keep
out.
As
for the animation, however… there's a spookily transcendent moment of
levitation very early on, but most of the cartoony improvisations are
clunkingly prosaic - at one point, drugs are mentioned and a ghostly
syringe floats into the frame. Elsewhere, the technique undercuts the
seriousness of what's being said: whoever Eamonn Healy is, he presumably
won't be best pleased to see his head ballooning up and down as he
expounds his theories of human evolution. You keep wondering - how much
difference would it make if the animation were removed? Is it really worth
the staggering palaver involved?
Without the animation gimmick, we might be in danger of realising
how close the film comes to vanishing up its own asshole. This tone is
often smugly self-referential, with endless name-dropping comment on the
meaning of films, and of dreams, and their interplay with reality. It all
becomes a little monotonous and repetitive, and it's no surprise to find
out that Linklater is from Austin, the major university town in Texas -
the movie is like walking through a college dorm and listening to the
students banging on, each of them convinced, like mankind through the
ages, that this is the most important time to be alive - one could call it
the pivot-of-history fallacy. The upside, of course, is that there are
more bizarre ideas and asides here than in a dozen 'conventional' films,
even those outside mainstream Hollywood. A figure looms out of the shadows
to tell us that Kierkegaard's last words were 'Sweep me up.' Does this
mean 'lift me to a higher plane' or 'discard me with the rest of the
garbage'? It's not a bad motto for the film itself.
In
the end, Waking Life succeeds or fails on this kind of moment-by-moment
basis. One minute, you're tearing your hair out at the way it reduces
philosophical and scientific research to the level of urban-myth anecdote,
telling us things that real movies, great movies, have the imagination to
show. The next, you're thanking Linklater for introducing you to some
amazing ideas and people - someone called Speed Levitch delivers a great,
crazy monologue on a bridge that's worth the price of admission alone -
the animation actually adds to the experience. Much more low-key, but just
as engaging, is John Christensen, a dream-theorist who informs Wiggins how
he can tell whether he's dreaming or not - it's a trick you will try at
home, the next time you're
asleep.
From www.jigsawlounge.co.uk
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