Director: Richard Linklater Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Richard Linklater, Lorelei Linklater Writer: Richard Linklater | 5/5 Waking Life With the recent success of Boyhood, it may be tempting for us to think that Linklater just now started making movies unlike anything else out there. And, truthfully, each project is so unique, diverse, and groundbreaking (in its own way), that you would be forgiven for thinking such a thing. But the truth is, Linklater has been pushing the boundaries of cinema for decades, starting with his original walk-and-talk mind study, Slacker. Waking Life, a series of dreams had by a character referred to in the credits as “Main Character,” is a lot like Slacker in may ways, only much more radical and artistically rewarding. In many ways, Waking Life is the true realization of the story Linklater began with Slacker. After all, the latter film oftentimes felt like one long dream more times than not. How many people have these absurdly deep, extended conversations in their everyday life, anyway? By setting his story in a dream, Linklater allows us to buy easily into this collage of the mundane, the strange, and the intimate. “Main Character,” played by Dazed and Confused star Wiley Wiggins, begins the story by hitching a ride - another similarity to Slacker. From here on out, switching in-between narratives, some of which do not even star Wiggins, the film slings from one flight of fancy to the next. Like Christopher Nolan’s Inception, another film based around dreams, Waking Life will cut from one scene to the next without much warning. This is a dream, so you can also expect some supernatural occurrences, like two men transforming into clouds. |
How exactly does Linklater pull this off? That brings me to the greatest wonder of this film. Though the movie was filmed on camera first, Linklater then overlaid the picture with artistic renditions, allowing him to bend reality as he pleases - every director’s dream. A project like this would fall apart real fast in the hand’s of most other artists, but the sheer will of Linklater’s creativity and vision molds this into something truly original. As the artistic styles shift and alter, so will your mood, your perceptions, and your mind.
In closing, Waking Life is not just a sibling of Slacker, but of Linklater’s body of work as a whole. The movie opens with the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater, playing a youthful game with another boy, instantly drawing to mind Lorelei’s role as the older sibling to Boyhood’s Mason. Linklater diehards will get the ultimate kick of seeing Jesse and Celine outside of their respected Before trilogy. For those of you dying to see these two share one more scene, that is reason enough to see Waking Life. I could give you a whole list, but I think I have said enough already.
(Available on iTunes)
In closing, Waking Life is not just a sibling of Slacker, but of Linklater’s body of work as a whole. The movie opens with the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater, playing a youthful game with another boy, instantly drawing to mind Lorelei’s role as the older sibling to Boyhood’s Mason. Linklater diehards will get the ultimate kick of seeing Jesse and Celine outside of their respected Before trilogy. For those of you dying to see these two share one more scene, that is reason enough to see Waking Life. I could give you a whole list, but I think I have said enough already.
(Available on iTunes)