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An Expression of the Holy Moments of Cinema
A boy imagines that he's suspended in the air, clinging to
the handle of his family's station wagon. He lets go and floats
away to an alternative universe of enlightened bums, monotone
professors pontificating on the excitement of existentialism,
and an angry man broadcasting antiestablishment rants from
a loudspeaker atop his car. Yes, the boy lands in Austin,
Texas.
Waking Life may be an expression of a first year at
college—a colorful, dizzying experience in which perceptions
are shaped by babbling Nietzsches. Richard Linklater's film
is a plotless, freeform poem of metaphysical, metacognitive
discussions on life, knowledge, dreams, and the like. Much
of the explosion-gawking, sex-craving mob might find this
dull as an Al Gore stump speech, but the philosophical musings—even
if kookily incoherent—are alive, worthy of the animated
world created for them. At its best, Waking Life is
an engaging, enlightening graduate class; at worst, Starbucks
inhabiting a Robert Smigel cartoon. But as an experiment in
filmmaking, Waking Life is never less than fascinating,
and, like a professor who recognizes a dull lecture, labors
to keep our attention in its world. Discount Kants cogitate
while the animation narrates: Existentialism taught through
"Fun With Reel Audio." A bearded class-warrior talks
about the origins of life, his body squirming with amebic
malleability, as if at any moment, he could reproduce by splitting
his nuclei. A cut stud in a black tee-shirt rants about animalistic
chaos and the sharkish media—perhaps under the weight
of Henry Rollins—while nonchalantly filling a gas can
and setting himself aflame.
Much to the eternal gratitude of fans of Before Sunrise,
Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy apparently lasted beyond that
magic moment atop the ferris wheel. Here, they appear right
at sunrise to ramble on about the factorials of common imaginings,
proof that the collective unconscious is a sort of telepathy...or
something like that. Their moment with us is fleeting; we
leave them for a wonk who's discovered free will amongst the
laws of quantum mechanics, that human existence is more than
random chance in a probability system.
Sometimes the dialogue hovers closer to this planet. Two
women—the women in this film are generally more shrill
than the men, thus don't come off as well—scoff at the
youthful idea that we'll somehow plateau in our mid-thirties.
Some of the scenes, like this one, are succinct and tight;
others are a flood of empty pronouns and prepositional phrases.
Waking Life suffers as it wears on, like a wilting
lecture hall. The animation grows hard to watch—imagine,
without commercials, four back-to-back episodes of "Dr.
Katz: Professional Therapist." But as the film winds
down, it asks us to question cinema as a slave to story, and
Waking Life, in all its formless glory, earns the right.
Linklater's film is about the "holy moments" of
cinematic truth, when we see a vision of the divine by staring
into the eyes of the filmmaker.
Admittedly, the final thirty minutes are a tiresome journey
through the possibilities of waking dreams, is it all a dream,
are you a dream, can we control our dreams, etc. Waking
Life could be an expression of the freshman experience,
but as it wore on, I began to feel like a senior—tired
of all the blathering, wanting to get on with real life, whatever
that is. But I can look back on it with nothing but profound
respect. Perhaps Waking Life is a free associative
crayoning of the final moments of life—perhaps it's both
these things. For many of us, college is the death of learned
truths and the birth of fresh perceptions, Waking Life
a painting of the final moments of that old life, moments
before we let go of the handle of the family station wagon,
forever, and float away to a new world. Linklater's landmark
might just prepare us for an new, enlightened life at the
movies.
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