Jeffrey M. Anderson
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"Dream is destiny," a little girl tells the young Wiley Wiggins
at the start of the new Waking Life, a brilliant new animated film
from Richard Linklater (Slacker). And in the spirit of those words,
the film takes on dreams and dream logic with the most full-fledged
embrace since Luis Bunuel released The Phantom of Liberty nearly
three decades ago.
The difference is that Waking Life concerns itself with lucid
dreams, not emotional dreams. Linklater is interested in talk, people
sorting out the various mysteries of the universe through intelligent
discussion. In this manner, Waking Life adopts the form of
Slacker, in which each character appears on screen for a few
minutes, delivers their diatribe, and leaves the film forever.
Only now we have a connecting factor in Wiley Wiggins, the young actor
from Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993), who doesn't have a name
in this film but may as well be called by his real name. Wiley wanders
around in this dream state meeting these folks and listening carefully to
their ideas. He encounters conflicting ideas from time to time; one
character insists that our destinies are predetermined, and another
exclaims that we're each writing our own books. (One monologue is
delivered by a monkey.)
Linklater shot Waking Life on digital video with real actors,
including Wiggins, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (the stars of Linklater's
Before Sunrise) and "Speed" Levitch (from the 1998 documentary
The Cruise). He then hired more than 30 animators to turn the
images into cartoons using the latest in computer technology. So not only
does each scene betray a distinctive artistic style, but such new-fangled
computer effects such as individually moving "plates" are now possible.
(Several different sections of background, such as tables in a caf? move
around independent of one another.) If Waking Life were nothing
else, it would at least be a breakthrough in the art of animation.
But even without the animation, Waking Life still exists as a
living, breathing entity, full of real thought, conversation and ideas. We
hear so little of this in our everyday movies that when it finally comes
it feels fresh and bracing.
However, I would argue that the animation is necessary to keep up the
"dream" theme. Linklater's imagery is too ordinary on its own to qualify
as dream time. Bunuel was the only director who could effectively pull
that off (and Linklater admitted as much to me during our conversation
last week). So the animation comes as a masterstroke meant to deliver us
into a non-real world where dream logic is indeed possible.
In addition, Linklater has learned that conversation alone will not
drive a film. He adds in just a few little privileged moments that drive
Waking Life over the top and into greatness. In an early scene,
Wiley sees a girl at a bus station and they share an emotional connection,
just by looking at one another and not even speaking. Later, Wiley begins
to float off into space and instinctively grabs hold of a car door handle.
It becomes his most important decision: whether or not to stay with
Earth-bound ideas or simply let go.
Waking Life allows us to do both -- to latch on to rational
thought or to simply let go and float. It's a truly great achievement.
From Bustible
Celluloid
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