Waking Life

Much like Linklater’s debut Slackers, Waking Life contains little by way of plot, preferring to butterfly flit from one rambling monologue to another, for this is a movie about Life, the Universe and Everything. No, really.

Featuring an idea which was originally mentioned in Slackers for the nameless central character voiced by Wiley Wiggins (Dazed And Confused), the movie is a dream from which he cannot awaken. Each re-surfacing is revealed as yet another dreamscape haunted by different philosophers with competing philosophies, from the barfly to Situationist variety (not that the two are mutually exclusive)

To create the aesthetic needed for such an ambitious venture, the film was first shot on digital film, and then painted over by 30 animators producing a unique, if wobbly effect, sure to seduce many and induce something akin to sea-sickness in others.

It’s hardly surprising when one considers the tepid reception afforded his most recent efforts (SubUrbia, The Newton Boys) that Waking Life sees its director re-connecting with his arthouse roots. As if to emphasise the point, many of the new film’s themes and characters seem to have wandered in from Linklater’s earlier films including Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy from Before Sunrise – regarded in the MovieHouse household as one of the genuinely greatest movies ever.

Okay, so the material can be obscure, if not utterly obtuse, and drifts uncomfortably close to pretension on occasion, but it would be churlish to dismiss Waking Life as anything other than a movie of big ideas. Even if, sometimes, they can be too big.