< BACK
"Waking Life" could not come at a better time. Opening in these sad and
fearful days after Sept. 11, it celebrates a series of articulate,
intelligent characters who seek out the meaning of their existence and do
not have the answers. At a time when madmen think they have the right to
kill us because of what they think they know about an afterlife, which is
by definition unknowable, those who don't know the answers are the only
ones asking sane questions. True believers owe it to the rest of us to
seek solutions that are reasonable in the visible world.
The movie is like a cold shower of bracing, clarifying ideas. We feel
cleansed of boredom, indifference, futility and the deadening tyranny of
the mundane. The characters walk around passionately discussing ideas,
theories, ultimate purposes--just as we've started doing again since the
complacent routine of our society was shaken. When we were students we
often spoke like this, but in adult life, it is hard to find intelligent
conversation. "What is my purpose?" is replaced by "What did the market do
today?"
The movie is as exhilarating in its style and visuals as in its
ideas--indeed, the two are interlocked. Richard Linklater and his
collaborators have filmed a series of conversations, debates, rants,
monologues and speculations, and then animated their film using a new
process which creates a shimmering, pulsating life on the screen: This
movie seems alive, seems vibrating with urgency and excitement.
The animation is curiously realistic. A still from the film would look
to you like a drawing. But go to www.wakinglifemovie.com and
click on the clips to see how the sound and movement have an effect that
is eerily lifelike. The most difficult thing for an animator may be to
capture an unplanned, spontaneous movement that expresses personality. By
filming real people and then animating them, "Waking Life" captures little
moments of real life: A musician putting down her cigarette, a
double-take, someone listening while eager to start talking again, a guy
smiling as if to say, "I'm not really smiling." And the dialogue has the
true ring of everyday life, perhaps because most of the actors helped
create their own words: The movie doesn't sound like a script but like
eavesdropping.
The film's hero, not given a name, is played by Wiley Wiggins as a
young man who has returned to the town where once, years ago, a playmate's
folding paper toy (we used to call them "cootie catchers") unfolded to
show him the words, "dream is destiny." He seems to be in a dream, and
complains that although he knows it's a dream, he can't awaken. He wanders
from one person and place to another (something like the camera did in
Linklater's first film, "Slacker"). He encounters theories, beliefs,
sanity, nuttiness. People try to explain what they believe, but he is
overwhelmed until finally he is able to see that the answer is--curiosity
itself. To not have the answers is expected. To not ask questions is a
crime against your own mind.
If I have made the movie sound somber and contemplative, I have been
unfair to it. Few movies are more cheerful and alive. The people
encountered by the dreamer in his journey are intoxicated by their
ideas--deliriously verbal. We recognize some of them: Ethan Hawke and
Julie Delpy, from Linklater's "Before Sunrise," continue their
conversation. Speed Levitch, the manic tour guide from the documentary
"Cruise," is still on his guided tour of life. Other characters are long
known to Linklater, including Robert C. Solomon, a philosopher at the
University of Texas, who comes onscreen to say something Linklater
remembers him saying in a lecture years ago, that existentialism offers
more hope than predestination, because it gives us a reason to try to
change things.
I have seen "Waking Life" three times now. I want to see it again--not
to master it, or even to remember it better (I would not want to read the
screenplay), but simply to experience all of these ideas, all of this
passion, the very act of trying to figure things out. It must be
depressing to believe that you have been supplied with all the answers,
that you must believe them and to question them is disloyal, or a sin.
Were we given minds in order to fear their questions?
From
Chicago
Sun-Times
<
BACK