2001 Directed by Richard Linklater
Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
Trevor Jack Brooks Lorelei Linklater Wiley Wiggins Glover Gill Lara Hicks Ames Asbell Leigh Mahoney Sara Nelson Jeanine Attaway Erik Grostick Bill Wise Robert C. Solomon Kim Krizan Eamonn Healy J.C. Shakespeare Ethan Hawke Julie Delpy Charles Gunning David Sosa Alex Jones Otto Hofmann Aklilu Gebrewold Carol Dawson Lisa Moore Steve Fitch Louis Mackey Alex Nixon Violet Nichols Steven Prince Show All…
Anne Walker-McBay John Sloss Jonathan Sehring Caroline Kaplan Palmer West Jonah Smith Tommy Pallotta
Line Research Fox Searchlight Pictures Thousand Words Flat Black Films Detour Filmproduction Independent Film Channel
Valve-unessa, Despertando a la vida, Waking Life: Prisonnier du rêve, Пробуждение жизни
>Be me
>At Dimple Records
>Planned on purchasing 'Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar'
>In line, see a gorgeous clerk
>Looks like Cybill Sheperd
>Long ass line
>Finally the penultimate person at the front of the line
>I take that back, she looks more like Ingrid Bergman
>Hear her mention her favorite director - Richard Linklater
>Get nervous
>Spaghetti falls out of my pockets
>I run out of line, nearly slipping on the spaghetti
>Picked up 'Waking Life', trying to impress her with my taste in film
>Discard the Disney masterpiece
>Line is shorter when I get back in
>Getting more nervous
>Start farting
>Shouldn't have eaten Taco Bell for breakfast
>See her laugh at her co-worker
>Her smile is…
I briefly checked the letterbox'd page for this before deciding on whether or not to watch it and glanced at the top review - "The most pretentious film ever made" - it solemnly says, half a star. Interest is piqued. The synopsis says "A man shuffles through a dream meeting various people and discussing the meanings and purposes of the universe", erection rising, well, whatever could this film be.
The number one rule of lucid dreaming they tell you is never lose sight of your goal or your ass will be teleported to the moon or some shit. The meat is all here but the lines are constantly shifting without telling anybody, the notion that there ever were any lines…
waking life (2001) absolutely NAILS what lucid dreaming is actually like AND has a cameo from celine & jesse of the before trilogy?!?! inception (2010) can't compete!!!!
If I watch anymore Linkater films today, I think my head will explode.
And, I'm perfectly okay with that.
Waking Life is a beautiful, quiet, and (at times) transcendent experience.
Nothing more can be said. As mentioned above, you need to experience it. So? Go ahead, check it out!
Everyone knows what it's like to dream, but for some reason it's really hard to translate that feeling on screen. So far only Satoshi Kon and Richard Linklater succeeded.
Cinematic Time Capsule
2001 Marathon - Film #15
”Hey! Are you a dreamer?
I haven’t seen too many around lately.”
With its trippy rotoscoping visuals and random flood of ideas, Richard Linklater’s meditation on dreams, life and existence is the very definition of film as art.
Every time I watch it I feel like I’m only picking up about 10% of what he’s laying down, but it’s always a different 10%. So I guess if I watch it enough I’ll eventually get it and that’ll probably happen just before I’m swept away on a stream of consciousness….
”As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle,
being swept along is no longer enough.”
Cinematic Time Capsule - 2001 Ranked
70/100
Third viewing, first since 2002. A lot has happened to me since then, dreamwise—I now have occasional lucid dreams*, which had never happened to me back then, and have also experienced multiple consecutive false awakenings, which really is disturbing as hell. (The factoid mentioned here about adjusting light levels is 100% true, by the way. When I suspect that I'm still dreaming, after seeming to awaken in my bed, I head for the bathroom and try to turn on the light, which never works and usually wakes me up instantly for real. What's more, the house is always darker than it should be, though it's hard to perceive that in the moment.) So I identified more with Wiggins' feeling…
Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living," but WAKING LIFE suggests that it is impossible to live without self-examination, that dreams are a way to take a break from consciousness to ruminate on it. I saw WAKING LIFE when I was 18 or 19, freshly into film and suffering from an acute case of being a college freshman. I called it pretentious, pointless, self-absorbed, and all the other adjectives young people use without a hint of self-awareness when they confront something that is (at least for the moment) insurmountably difficult and decide to play a game of chicken instead of just backing down.
I'm mature enough now to be upfront and admit that a number of the treatises…
The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room.
Who would've thought 100 minutes of animated people talking about existential life questions would be so fascinating? Certainly one of the most thought-provoking and intriguing films I've ever seen.
One of my favourite versions of filmmaker Richard Linklater other than the naturalistic and ever-growing Before trilogy would be his meandering animated experiment Waking Life. But maybe this meandering is the only way that Waking Life can work as perfectly as it does, and it's another brand of Richard Linklater that I wish I could see more of. It draws back to what he created in his debut film, Slacker, but something about Waking Life makes it feel like a more fully realized project in itself. But it's a sort of Richard Linklater that I like atop all the rest because of how it feels just like what its title describes it as: a wake-up call for our lives and…
"Of course, everyone knows fun rules."
Linklater sure doesn't seem to! Of course, cinema is more than just entertainment, and lord knows I don't simply turn on a movie to have fun (at least, not all the time), but if I want intellectual stimulation, I'd rather go to a movie that has ideas rather than a pop-philosophical anthology of half-baked ideas and monologues. Convinced that if the rotoscoping wasn't so damn beautiful, people would see through this a lot easier. There's just nothing here. Ponderous, insufferable, intellectually bankrupt- I can deal with one of those things at a time, maybe even two, but all three is a tough sell. Imagine how good this could be if it were a narrative feature.
...and, in honor of National Poetry Month, a brief bit of prose:
To
Dream
Might not
Have as much
Meaning as this flick
Ascribes to it, but I'd rather
Find out for myself, because Waking Life makes me sleep.
Anytime I find myself questioning the meaning of life I put on this film. The conversations between these characters open my eyes.
My dreams are not as philosophical or existential as this but I'm working on it
Una asombrosa experiencia onírica de 101 minutos, entretenido y substancioso al mismo tiempo. Encontré muy estimulante la idea central y cómo cada una de las discusiones se desenvuelve, y me llamó mucho la atención la forma en que el estilo de animación a veces contrasta y/o acompaña el tema del que se está hablando en particular. Alimenta la curiosidad intelectual sin ser pretencioso o incomprensible, más bien es una historia placentera que da respuesta a algunas preguntas y que hace que surjan nuevas. Este filme mostró muchas cosas que yo no tuve la capacidad de vocalizar antes.
i felt some of the conversations were just not needed but towards the end the film felt somewhat transcendent, unlike any film i've ever seen before. less of a narrative and more an exploration. i love philosophy so this is right up my alley. at first the animation style is a bit jarring but eventually you get settled in, something about the style suddenly makes you attentive to every detail and word being spoken at times. really interesting, would love to see it when im super high lol...
It’s an interesting movie with a lot of fascinating points of view on life, and I know that the movie is intended to be kind of surreal, like a dream, but at times some conversations lost my attention.
When it focused entirely on dreams, it was great.
Celine ve Jesse (Before serisi) var diye filmi bir yıl önce listeme almıştım ama filmde olduklarını unutmuşum bugün izlerken onları görünce şaşırdım.
During the process of watching Waking Life, I wasn't feeling hugely impacted. It was only after I finished, when I went upstairs to brush my teeth, and turn out the lights, and get ready for bed, that I realized the power of this movie. I felt like I was dreaming. That feeling when everything seems real, but just a little off-kilter, your perspective feels a little distant. Accurately depicting dreams on film is extremely difficult, and so it's truly high praise to say this movie is miles beyond the rest. It's able to credibly capture the meandering, subtle surrealism of dreams, although I have to say, in doing so, it does have to sometimes sacrifice cohesion and enjoyment.
Alguien dice que en 7 años cambiamos totalmente nuestras cédulas y se pregunta ¿seguimos siendo las mismas persona después de 7 años?
holli 301 films
movies without a strong central plot or a typical three act structure, where instead it's mostly just characters wandering around,…
Rahat Ahmed 100 films
100 highest-rated feature-length animated films on Letterboxd. Sequels to shows—Japanese, American or from elsewhere—that need greater context before watching have…
Tobias Andersen 8,758 films
Rules: Generate a number (from 1 to x) via: www.random.org
See how many number of films there are in the…
Simon Ramshaw 255 films
Recently, I've become aware that certain films are able to transcend the medium by being completely self-assured in their atmospheres…
Hungkat 438 films
A very rough list of eccentric cerebral films - films that are consisted of many wonderful imaginative ideas and creations,…
Gordon 1,690 films
Just a list of some pretty cool movie posters on the LB database. I haven't seen most of these movies.…
RichAtThePics 1,309 films
All of Metacritic's Must-See* movies, in ranked order, as they appear on the Metacritic website (almost**). Use list view of…
Hungkat 242 films
Yea, reeling stuff. This is not necessarily about movies having the best endings but these are the ones that leave…
Jack Moulton 1,444 films
Members Represented: 3,125
It's simple: Post your #1 ever (no runners-up or ties please) in the comments and I'll add…
MomSaysItsOK 1,000 films
In April 2018, the subreddit /r/TrueFilm voted for a canon of 1000 films. Close to 300 users submitted a list…
