Waking Life

[Rain]

Has anyone on this forum seen this film?

Until yesterday I was completely unaware of it's existence, but due to some insomnia I was able to sit through it at 1am in the morning on Channel 4 (good old UK TV) and it 's an amazing and deep animated film.

Rotten Tomatoes (the critic website) gave this film a 78%, which is generous from them lol

To be fair it's very talky with very little action at all but when you start to understand what they are talking about it is very interesting. It's even influenced my current project. :P


here are some screenshots of the film.

Spoiler

http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/12/04/waking_life/story.jpg[/IMG]
http://www.aspenfilm.org/images/upload/ ... NGLIFE.JPG[/IMG]
http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/movie/waking_life/11.jpg[/IMG]

Camisado

 

[Rye]

That whole movie was very confusing. @.@ I remember this year we watched it in my philosophy class, and well, even watching it twice it still is confusing. I think one of my favorite scenes was when the 4 (I think) guys were walking down the road, and they see the old guy on a telephone pole. The ending left me very confused however...

Spoiler

See, I started to think near the end that the main character was dead since he was hit with the truck near the beginning of the film. And if that was right, then when he floated off at the end, does that mean he accepted that he died or was he just going into another dream, etc. etc.

The artsy-aspect of the movie is just very nice, however. I love how odd the art was and how it moved around a lot. :3

 

[Rain]

Your thoughts mirror mine exactly Rye, I was so confused by it, and I agree with you on the ending although I'm not sure if the first bit was real either as he was getting a lift in a boat car :p

 

[Rye]

Yeah, the part where he gets hit is already unclear if that was real. Another thing I would like to wonder is if he was ever awake during the movie. If that is the case, then we couldn't really determine what happened to him at the end, as we never knew him out of his dreamland. In that scenario, he could just be being lifted into another dream and he's doomed to never wake up. @_@ But, if readers haven't seen this movie, you should, just to have the experiance!

 

[Draken]

It reminds me of A Scanner Darkly which was an excellent film. Could be the same people?

 

[Rye]

Yeah, they were made by the same people and I do believe using the same kind of effects.

 

[Prexus]

It was done by hand drawing over each frame of actual film. Waking Life had various artists, using various styles, whereas Scanner Darkly used one style.

I couldn't sit through Waking Life. I am all for psychological and philosophical discussions, and interestingly animated movies, but this movie was very dry and tasteless. It had little to offer, was very back and forth and it was hard to draw links between certain things, and the animation made me feel like I had a tumor.