Waking Life is a 2001 American adult animated surrealist drama film written and directed by Richard Linklater. The film explores a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of reality, dreams and lucid dreams, consciousness, the meaning of life, free will, and existentialism. The series of philosophical discussions at the film's core are processed by a young man who wanders through a succession of dreamlike realities wherein he encounters a series of characters playing themselves.
Shot in Mini DV camera, the film was edited digitally in animation through rotoscoping. It contains several parallels to Linklater's 1990 film Slacker. Waking Life premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, and was released on October 19, 2001. It received critical acclaim For a while he felt the idea for the film "didn't quite work", calling it "too blunt, too realistic" and saying, "I think to make a realistic film about an unreality the film had to be a realistic unreality".
Post-production
To create that visual effect, Linklater used an animation technique based on rotoscoping, in which animators overlay the live-action footage with animation that roughly approximates the images actually filmed. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly awarded the film an "A" rating, calling it "a work of cinematic art in which form and structure pursue the logic-defying (parallel) subjects of dreaming and moviegoing".
Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements, Waking Life won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film", the New York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film", and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the Venice Film Festival for "Best Film". It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2008 – AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Animation Film
Home media
The film was released on VHS and DVD in North America in 2002. Special features included several commentaries, documentaries, interviews, trailers, and deleted scenes, as well as the short film Snack and Drink. A bare-bones DVD with no special features was released in Region 2 in 2003. A Blu-Ray was released in Germany and the UK.
Soundtrack
The Waking Life OST was performed and written by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra, except for Frédéric Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2. The soundtrack was relatively successful. Featuring the nuevo tango style, it bills itself "the 21st Century Tango". The tango contributions were influenced by the music of the Argentine "father of new tango" Astor Piazzolla.
See also
- Dream argument
- Dream art
- Oneironautics
- Simulated reality
References
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