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Richard
Linklater¡¯s Waking Life is one of the more interesting and
significant releases of 2002. It manages something of a juggling act,
exploring existential themes through the journey of it¡¯s protagonist
played by Wiley Wiggins, as well as commenting upon Linklater¡¯s previous
work ¨C most notably 1991¡¯s seminal Slacker. Waking Life is
both a revisitation and re-interpretation of earlier structures and
approaches and theories. Our protagonist, hit by a passing car (after an
opening sequence directly reminiscent of the opening of Slacker)
comes to and begins a listless pilgrimage through the streets of Austin,
Texas. On the way he encounters a range of strangers, some bizarre, some
intense, some light and amusing, but all deliver a sermon on their own
vision of life, existence and dreams. The very crux of this film echoes
the style of Slacker, which utilised a similar narrative structure,
with the camera following one character, before veering off after five
minutes to concentrate on the next, much like the narrative form utilised
by Max Oph¨¹ls¡¯ La Ronde. But Linklater does something else with
Waking Life. The film has been animated using a technique called
rotoscopy, so that the each sequence is transformed into a hyper-real,
kinetic vision where hair may sprout flowers or words become images as
they pass the character¡¯s lips. This may be a film that will frustrate,
even bore many as it flicks through arguments and positions like a
philosophical rolodex. But Waking Life is less about what the
characters say, and more about what the film says as a total idea or
comment, and it¡¯s engagement with recent film histories and challenging
technologies that makes this film such a commanding, exciting cinematic
experience.
Structurally and thematically, Waking Life is
Slacker ten years on, and the differences between the films are
intriguing. Slacker is the film that gave the name to a genre, and
in its wake films from Kevin Smith¡¯s Clerks to Doug Liman¡¯s
Go have traded on this original exploration of youthful ennui and
cynicism. A decade later the mood is more reflective. Although Waking
Life possesses a strong sense of melancholy, it is more active in
trying to make sense of life, progressing from the discontented surrender
which characterised their counterparts in the 1991 film. But this is not
just a companion piece to Linklater¡¯s earlier film. It¡¯s also happy to
reintroduce characters from a range of his films ¨C actors from Dazed
and Confused and subUrbia reappear, there are clever in-jokes
from people featured in Slacker, and most notably Julie Delpy and
Ethan Hawke reprise their roles as the young lovers from Before
Sunrise. There exists a greater sense of spirit and beauty in this
film, even if it allows some of the more pompous speakers to drone on
along with those with more interesting things to say. Slacker had a
democratised, egalitarian style and Waking Life revisits that
ideal, even if it means those you could care less about feature as heavily
as those that challenge and provoke and entertain. It could be argued
Waking Life only exists in relation to its references, and
certainly there¡¯s much pleasure to be gained in this game of compare and
contrast. But Waking Life also yields pleasures in and of itself
that make it stand on its own feet, separate from its
companions.
The
parade of talking heads, sprouting Kierkegaard and Kant are alternately
fascinating and absurd. You¡¯re not expected to believe them all, or even
to understand them all. What they are is a passing parade of concepts
which Wiggins listens to, passively internalising their views before
turning to the next way of seeing. What Linklater establishes is a
smorgasbord of thought, and both Wiggins character and the audience choose
from and reject what is presented. The gradual shift into uncertainty, as
Wiggins struggles to distinguish between waking and dreaming adds a faint
desperation to the quest. Linklater employs a Groundhog Day sense
of repetition, where initial engagement with the idea gives way to a
desperate feeling of entrapment. As the wandering, questioning protagonist
grapples with his ¡®waking life¡¯, the strangers he meets become less like
philosophers and more like guides, gentle torch bearers leading him to
some sort of difficult epiphany. And whilst this may sound somewhat twee,
Linklater makes it work through his quite formal structures and nonchalant
style: it¡¯s a great blend of the controlled and the flippant. Added to
this is the animation which changes style from scene to scene, from frank
realism to poetic imagery, the minimalist to the abundantly imaginative.
The constant shifting of the reality onto deeper, more striking visual
planes is an additional mode of reading the film. The characters seem to
exist in uncertain spaces, things move and shift constantly as if the
entire world is cast upon a rocky sea. It builds a strong, disconcerting
tone, a shifting amorphous world whose benevolence seems to suggest a
hidden, rolling turmoil beneath the surface. Linklater marries the images
and the dialogue, and his main character¡¯s search for meaning in a
brilliantly illuminating fashion, providing opportunities for him to bring
out the wildness of the words and to crystallise the difficult concepts he
confronts. It¡¯s a near perfect approach to difficult, some might even
dismiss as pretentious, material.
Waking Life asks us where we come from and where we¡¯re
going, and how we see what passes us by. But it also asks the same
question of cinema and of the director himself. That¡¯s what is so exciting
about Waking Life - for all its talking, the dialogue exists beyond
the characters espousing their views. It¡¯s a commentary on much larger
issues that it carries out in a crazy, kinetic forum, throwing down
challenges, positing explanations. It has taken a decade for Linklater to
move from Slacker to Waking Life, and the comparison between
the two says much about the social shifts that have occurred in that time.
It¡¯s almost akin to Michael Apted's 7 Up series, with a sense that
these films operate as social documents. Waking Life on its own is
still a fascinating, intriguing film, difficult in some respects, and
enlightening in others. Viewed as a companion to his other work, or as a
film in its own right, Linklater¡¯s Waking Life remains a
provocative and evocative exploration of life and death and the various
states of existence which fall in between.
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