A man has several dreams: he arrives at a city and hitchhikes in a boat-car driven by a wiseguy. The man sees a note on the street which says: "Look to your right", and as he looks in that direction, a car runs into him. He seemingly awakens, but is just in another dream. And another. And another. He encounters philosophers contemplating about life, talking about existentialism, free will and synchronicity. A man pours gasoline over himself and sets himself on fire out of protest against the world. A red man shouts against his enemies while being in jail. Alex Jones shouts over the loudspeaker while driving a car. Another guy warns him that you cannot know if you are dreaming all until you wake up. Finally, the man seemingly awakens, but then starts floating and flies up into the sky.
Included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, "Waking Life" seems like a rotoscopic version of Richard Linklater's own previous film "Slacker" which had an experimental structure without a real story, and consisted just out of random episodes featuring unusual characters that random appear and disappear in the city. "Waking Life" also has no story and instead just consists out of twenty 5-minute episodes in which random people talk, which is its biggest flaw. At first, the rotoscopic animation is fascinating, with lavish colors and a dreamy mood to it, but once you get use to it, you realize that these disparate episodes are of a varying degree of success: some are interesting, some are boring. Kim Krizian, for instance, has a gorgeous monologue about communication: "Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable." Another great moment is when the protagonist walks, randomly passes by a red-hair woman, but then the woman runs after him: "Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us." They then stop and have an endearing, honest and heartfelt conversation, all until the protagonist looks at his watch, notices the numbers are "fuzzy" and realizes it's all a dream, so he asks her: "How is it being a character in a dream?" There is an overabundance of philosophy, which is refreshing and challenging, yet a scarcity of a guideline of where all of this is heading, since all these episodes just come and go without any point, leaving a feeling of an aimless exercise. Art-film lovers will enjoy it more, but the proper audience will enjoy it less and perceive it as frustratingly hermetic and abstract.
Grade:++
No comments:
Post a Comment