About Dreams, and Life, and Reality: Waking Life
What is reality?
Do we actually exist?
How do we know we're not dreaming?
What does it all mean, if anything?
Around the time I was twenty, I found these questions of exceptional importance. In fact, they seemed to be THE essence of the whole issue we call consciousness. How come not everyone was talking about them, all the time? Eventually, after going around in circles numerous times without reaching a satisfactory conclusion, they became less pressing, though my interest in them remained.
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As these things happen to happen, at the right time and the right place, there was a film that came out just then (early 2001), addressing many of these questions: Waking Life, written and directed by Richard Linklater. I remember seeing it the theaters at first, and I was so fascinated by it that I wanted to stay to watch it again. However, my friends I went to see it with were not up to it, so I left the cinema yearning for more. Not much later the film came out on DVD, and then there was nothing to stop me from watching it again and again, like a little kid, until I could (almost) quote each scene.
Not Your Typical Movie
Waking Life is nothing like a normal film with character development or a story arc. It is much more like a "dream within a dream", a sequence of unrelated scenes, with characters that mostly appear only once in the whole movie. The only exception is the protagonist, a young guy, who sort of passes through them without doing too much either. In fact, many scenes do not even include him. In the ones that do, his interaction is minimal, especially during the first half of the film. Instead, he is observing, listening, and absorbing what the other people are talking about. Which is really the entire point of the movie.
Philosophical Questions Discussed in a Surreal Dreamspace
Apart from the deep questions addressed in the monologues of each scene, what makes this film a masterpiece is the technique it was created with: Rotoscoping is called when live-action footage is painted over, creating a realistic animation, depending on how close to reality they are painted over. And that's where this technique highlights the dreamlike feel of the movie. It even includes scenes where the main character wakes up in bed, but continues experiencing the same dream, leading to other false awakenings later on.
Are All The Questions Dream Related?
At first it is not obvious, but as the film progresses it becomes more and more evident that the main issue is whether it's a dream or not. And how we can tell? And finally, how to wake up? In fact, all of life's questions somehow lead back to this (not just in this movie, as you might have guessed). Some are expressed in the mad ramblings of a conspiracy nut, others in the gentle pillow talk of a young couple. Some ideas may come from a discussion with a university professor, while others from a hobo in a train yard. The characters are just as wide ranging as the actors playing them, including various cameos. Linklater himself appears at the end of the movie, giving perhaps the most important clues.
Memories Coming Back
This review was inspired by the contest created by @wiseagent to promote the new scrobble.life website and the corresponding community. (Take a look at my last post about it for more details.) One of the criteria was to review a film that brings back a particular memory. And does it? Well sure, but it's mostly the other way around.
Waking Up in a Dream, in Real Life
Take this weird experience I had not too long ago: On my bike trip down the Baja California I was camping on a beach next to volcano near San Quintín. In the early morning hours I had a dream that I was back home in the city. It was cold, wet, and dark, I had just woken up to an alarm, and was getting ready to go to work. In my pre-coffee daze I remembered my dream, that I was in a beautiful part of the world, camping on a beach right next to volcano. Then I woke up for real!
As I was packing up my tent, I was contemplating that waking up in my dream had felt just as real. And also the interesting notion, of what happens to the dream world once we wake up? Ultimately Linklater's Waking Life came to mind. Not that this film offers any real answers... But what it most certainly does, is raise some questions. Questions that we're welcome to ignore, until we eventually circle back to them.
Existential questions that many people sum up and answer with the word... God. I think that reality, existence, etc., are human concepts; from that point of view, I side with the idea that we are real, we exist, and we have value for the Universe—not just us, but animals, plants, etc.; everything is a creation of the Universe that many call God
It’s been a while since I’ve read such a great review. I’m definitely putting this at the top of my list because it tackles a topic that few... very few people appreciate 😅😅—and that’s life’s big question.... But I really love that 🤩🤩. I recently talked about Prometheus, which in its own way also tackles some of life’s big questions—and these are movies I never get tired of watching, just like you do with this film 😃😃
I’d like to recommend Donnie Darko to you, which also raises existential questions in its own way; it’s another movie tied to this existential theme that I never get tired of watching
Oh sweet! You know, what you just said comes very close to the clues Linklater is suggesting in his cameo appearance at the end of the film! I can totally go with it. And Donie Darko... I think I even saw it once, but for some reason it had so little impact on me that I can barely remember anything about it. But now I feel like watching it again!
🥹🥹👍🏻
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