Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way.
Some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life’s mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.
Waking Life is a 2001 American adult animated docufiction film, directed by Richard Linklater. It is the first animated film released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and to date is the only animated film released by Fox Searchlight, though will be joined by upcoming stop-motion film Isle of Dogs.
The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues including the nature of reality, dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism. Waking Life is centered on a young man who wanders through a succession of dream-like realities wherein he encounters a series of individuals who engage in insightful philosophical discussions.
The film was entirely rotoscoped, although it was shot using digital video of live actors with a team of artists drawing stylized lines and colors over each frame with computers, rather than being filmed and traced onto cells on a light box. The film contains several parallels to Linklater’s 1991 film Slacker. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their characters from Before Sunrise in one scene. Waking Life premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.
Waking Life (2001)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Trevor Jack Brooks, Lorelei Linklater, Wiley Wiggins, Lara Hicks, Ames Asbell, Leigh Mahoney, Jeanine Attaway, Bill Wise, Eamonn Healy
Screenplay by: Richard Linklater
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Richard Linklater, Tommy Pallotta
Film Editing by: andra Adair
Art Direction by: Bob Sabiston
Music by: Glover Gill
MPAA Rating: R for language and some violent images.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: October 19, 2001
Visits: 120
