Waking Life

Back in 1991 Richard Linklater came out of nowhere with Slacker. Now, as much as I love the fact that Austin helped to start the indie binge of the 90s, I never really saw what everyone else saw in this movie. It’s just a bunch of meandering speeches that, overall, don’t mean a damn thing. Nothing really adds up and we don’t give a rat’s ass about anything that happens. The only part that was even mildly amusing to me was the bit about Madonna’s pap smear. In fact, that’s the only thing I remember about that movie. That and I think someone gets hit by a car. I couldn’t tell you if that’s true, though. I could be making it up just to make the movie a little more exciting.

Then Rick started making real movies with real storylines. Dazed And Confused was awesome. Before Sunrise was even better. SubUrbia (the only one not written by Linklater) was also really good. And The Newton Boys, well, I seem to be the only one who liked that one. But who cares? I had to make up for my indifference to Slacker, right?

Now Rick has gone in a direction that no one would have ever seen: the philosophical animation film. Hell, it’s not even a genre that anyone knew existed!

There’s no real story here to speak of. Think of this as Slacker with more brains (in fact, maybe too many brains for some) and an even more philosophical bent.

Wiley Wiggins (from Dazed And Confused, Love And A .45 and the awful Boys) is an aimless twenty-something who drifts back into his hometown only to get picked up by a guy in a boat/car (for a ride, not some weird sex thing) and promptly gets hit by a car. What happens to him from there is something that could only happen in this movie: he moves from one person to the next as they tell him about their theories on life, evolution and dreams.

Wiley is only drifting through life (“sleep walking through his life or wake walking through his dreams”) and isn’t even sure if his life is actually life or just a dream. If it’s a dream, he can’t wake up from it.

First off, let me say this: if you have no interest in this sort of philosophy, avoid this movie. It’s extremely heady and not everyone is going to understand it. Hell, I consider myself slightly above average in the intellect department (there are a LOT of stupid people out there…look at the success of The Mummy movies) and I didn’t get all of it. In fact, the first half hour was very much like sitting through a philosophy class. And I reacted to it in the same way that I would a class. I really wanted to be interested and really wanted to understand, but I just didn’t. So I almost started to nod off. He just goes from one person to the next for about 20 minutes of the movie and they pontificate very loudly about their thoughts. At one point he walks up to a guy, says “Hey, man.” and the guy goes into a speech. Now, I realize it’s only a movie, suspension of disbelief and all that, but come on! No one does that!

But then a very strange thing happened. Something clicked and it all started making sense. There was a reason for this unrealistic sort of speech. And when they started talking about dreams it got very interesting. By the end of the movie (which leaves more questions than answers) I loved it and wished it had gone on longer than its 97 minutes.

And the animation fits the story so well that you almost forget that it is animated. But it would be a shame to do that because it’s animated in such a cool way. Linklater shot the whole thing on digital video then had a huge team of animators (including Wiley) rotoscope the whole thing. But they didn’t do it in the normal Ralph Bakshi way. They did it in their own wacked out styles. Backgrounds move in fifty different directions at once. Eyes don’t quite stay on bodies. Words form in peoples’ lips. Characters suddenly shift styles.

And let me tell you, I think the animation helped a lot. A friend of mine told me that Rick thought that the movie would be too pretentious if it hadn’t been animated. I think he was right. With Wiley floating all over the place and people just suddenly bursting out into Platonic verses it would have seemed like Rick had gone off the deep end and finally made a movie showing just how crazy he really is. But in animation you can do just about anything, and he did it all here. (Including violence. One scene is so jarring as to seem like it’s in a different movie. I don’t think anyone in the audience saw it coming at all.)

And I think the animation helped Wiley’s acting. There was no more playing with his nose in this one. (I HATE that!!!!)

Keep an eye out for Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy playing two people who could be their characters in Before Sunrise. Also watch for Austin musician Guy Forsythe (playing a ukelele), Adam Goldberg (from Dazed and Saving Private Ryan), Steven Soderbergh and Rick himself.

This is a pretty brilliant film from some one who we’ve always known had it in him, he just needed some time to come up with it. Now, is he really this smart? Or did he have a lot of help with the writing? That’s the key question here.