Waking Life |  | Directors: Bob Sabiston, Richard Linklater
Actors: Ethan Hawke, Ryan Power, Trevor Jack Brooks, Lorelei Linklater, Wiley Wiggins
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.98
Buy Used: $4.25
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Rating:  328 reviews
Sales Rank: 4065
Format: Anamorphic, Animated, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 024543040651
UPC: 024543040651
EAN: 0024543014393
ASIN: B00005YU1O
Theatrical Release Date: 2001
Release Date: May 7, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A man in a dream state begins to question whether waking or dreaming is the true reality; while on his journey in the dream he meets many interesting characters who talk with him about the meaning of life, perception and human existance.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 15-APR-2003
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com
Waking Life is a film that never settles down. Or maybe it never wakes up. Regardless, Richard Linklater's animated meditation seems to strike a perfect balance between the plotless meanderings of Slacker and the unquenchable knowledge-seeking of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Any way you look at it, this is a weird, original movie. As he attempts to figure out what separates dreams from reality, the protagonist (Dazed and Confused's Wiley Wiggins) hears an earful from everyone he stumbles upon. Ramblings range from the scholarly (Linklater's former college professor Robert C. Solomon gives a monologue) to the banal (of which there are plenty). Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Steven Soderbergh, and Adam Goldberg all get animated cameos, basically playing themselves. The dream-centered dialogues eventually grow mind-numbing, but that's OK; the animation steals the show. Each frame of the movie, which was first shot with live actors, was painted over, and the process renders a distorted and trippy collage of sights and sounds. Linklater's film is ultimately quite poignant, but, as with any good journey, you'll need to sit through some fairly tedious moments before reaching the destination. --Jason Verlinde
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 328
 The most important anime of the year it was produced January 25, 2010
Asgeir Valur Sigurdsson (Iceland)
OK WE'VE RECEIVED THE WAKE - UP CALL!!
This film begins with a boy and a girl who wake up to the reality that the city they have been spending their short time in , is really a construction nightmare.
To fix the problem , the boy decides to grow up and be a good listener. This proves to be the wisest decision he has ever made in his whole life , and as a result he gets drawn to tons of listeners and people who speak to him directly. The film is a direct attempt to implement a serious attack against the State , and in where the advancement of the consciousness shift is predicted. The film is not an attack against the State which has been set up in a manner which is easily noticeable by the authorities , or perhaps even the producers themselves. The listeners decide to rebel against the screaming silence that they have subjected themselves to , resulting in a heightened sense of self - awareness which results in serious discussions on the nature and meaning of awareness. Attempts are made to answer as many philosophical questions as possible. The result becomes one of the most celebrated animes of all time , because the anime reaches to people of all ages and every amount of individuality available. The film deals thus with the consciousness shift in where little emphasis is put on the role of construction corporations and the consequences of the abuse they have become responsible for on a mental , emotional and physical level. The film emphasizes the concept of the importance of being a good listener. The problem in this world is that people refuse to actually listen to each other. As a result , society has evolved into a construction nightmare.
Alex Jones cries out that he wants freedom - but he has sacrificed himself to the powers that he says he is rebelling against , and thus has evolved into a corporate slave who represents everything he says he has opposed. And hence all kinds of people known and unknown are studied in the film.
Finally the grown up man discovers that he has in fact died , and that he died because a meteor crashed on the city where he had been alive , or that maybe he didn't die but entered an alternative universe where he has more control. Note that Alex Jones is alone in his car , the people are simply too smart and awake and aware to be treated like sheep so he has no audience. He represents the one who doesn't want to be a listener but who thinks he is. The main character , the listener , gets drawn to all the other listeners , and everything changes around them. Suddenly they realize it is in their hands to make decisions on how to change the form or structure of the city they had been spending their lives so much in. Thus the film actually predicts that the consciousness shift which will start in 2009 will start by the collapsing of Alex Jones'reputation as a documentary maker , and will then gradually evolve , first by means of entering a stage of acceleration , later it becomes sudden as the film advances. Now everyone is talking about it , and as a result , the construction corporations have lost their power. Now it is up to the inhabitants of the city to decide how they want to change it , beginning with the prisons. Do they want the city to continue to be a prison or not? They decide to conclude that the city doesn't have to be a gulag or a prison and move on.
In this film , existentialism and other branches of philosophy journey together to create a bigger picture than the one we had gotten used to since 1999.
 Information + Animation = Distracting January 2, 2010
Dottie A. Randazzo (Pennsylvania, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1KDCYOYG3W8SK
very enlightening November 30, 2009
J. Maldonado (Jax., Fl.)
This movie is incredibly enlightening, it is full of nothing but informative yet interesting conversations. Everything said in this movie has meaning and power behind it. It will truly open your mind.. to other things. To other dimensions..
Review: Waking Life (2001) October 4, 2009
Matthew Lanka
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Richard Linklater
Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Bill Wise, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Alex Jones, Richard Linklater, John Christensen
"What the hell is this guy talking about?" I thought that exact phrase about 15 times throughout this movie. Combine very abstract visual animations of live action video with very existential and philosophical monologues and dialogues and you have Waking Life. You will probably need to see it at least twice to fully absorb everything.
There is a very loose story. Willy Wiggins is getting lectures from or talking with various people about the nature of reality and the meaning of life, and the whole thing is animated. There isn't really a beginning, middle, or end, just a series of conversations or monologues. At times it feels like a really weird, artsy documentary.
Even though some of the scenes are ostensibly conversations, the characters don't talk normally, the way you or I would. The all feel very scripted, and to me the bizarre animations are covering up what is probably some very bad acting, or at least unconvincingly delivered lines of philosophical dialogue.
If you like artsy movies or want your mind blown off the chart, then this movie is probably for you. After a few scenes of re-defining the nature of reality, I found myself desensitized to what the characters were trying to say. You aren't really given time to digest the significance of each character's point of view before you're thrust with another, and I didn't feel that the artsy animation style really added anything to what the characters said. More often than not I found it unnecessary or even distracting.
Final Score: 6/10
'toons and philosophical enquiries meld surprisingly well September 25, 2009
Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast)
Where to start with this one? First of all, it's visually impressive (though not absolutely mind-blowing as some have said...if you've seen a lot of animation, you've probably seen plenty of stuff this inventive), making some of the best use of rotoscoping (animated tracing over live-action figures, with animated backgrounds) that I've seen in a feature; it's got a fairly ambitious intellectual conceit (a man who may or may not be on the verge of death throughout the film dreams in a lucid way about what the nature of reality, consciousness, free will, etc really are); it's got great music (by Glover Gill)...what more could you want? Well, for starters, it works out to be not much more than philosophical ramblings, and I think to some extent it wears out its welcome. Now, if you knew me you'd know I often like long movies...I have no problem with a lot of work that a lot of people call "slow"; but this was to me too much of the same thing. And some of the observations are facile in a druggy-stoner way that just made me think, who cares? Like pothead versions of Seinfeld and company, frankly.
Still, adding it up, I'm thinking about it quite a lot since I first watched the excellent, feature-packed DVD a couple of years ago. Another aspect I really liked was the self-referentiality: the film as a whole is very reminiscent of the director's first feature, SLACKER; it contains a short scene with Jesse and Celine, the characters from the previous BEFORE SUNRISE that also obviously looks forward to the sequel to that film, BEFORE SUNSET; the technique used and some of the more fantastic imagery seems now a tryout for the director's later rotoscoped Philip K Dick adaptation, A SCANNER DARKLY; and both Linklater and his good friend (and fellow experimental-at-times filmmaker) Steven Soderbergh make appearances. And there's a scene or two late in the film that is reminiscent of the work of another extremely self-referential artist, the experimental American SF writer Samuel R. Delany (specificially, his 1000-page, Joycean "Dhalgren").
I need to see it again; reading some pretty intelligent reviews this afternoon leads me to believe that a deeper reading would be more rewarding. Despite many reservations, I'm giving it high marks simply for attempting subject matter and film techniques that nobody else in America seems interested in. Linklater has proved himself a great disciple of European art cinema, not just the usual Scorsese-Coppola-DePalma stuff, and that's all to the good.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 328
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