David
08-Oct-2003, 11:40 AM
Anyone seen this? I thought it was amazing and, if I had time I would have watched it through a second time as soon as it finished the first playback.
http://www.ugccrawley.com/waking_life.htm
Following ripped from a review cos I can't be bothered to write :)
Waking Life uses new techniques of animation - first shot on digital film, then computer animated by a team of artists in varied styles. The results are dizzying and weightless, while bypassing the too-perfect quality of some regular animation. Tables and chairs float, eyes literally pop out of heads and thoughts become visible. It is meant as a companion piece to 1991's Slacker, and like that film consists of a series of vignettes containing unusual characters connected only by the mainly silent protagonist - only it has moved on from the high school kids of Dazed and Confused and the slackers of Slacker to a world of over-educated, over-analytical twenty- and thirtysomething eccentrics and preachers. Moving swimmingly through contextless meetings these characters spout articulate, uninterrupted theories and ideas about existentialism, evolution and the dreamworld.
"We're all theory and no action" muses one character, aptly. But this isn't a problem, as the film is an exploration of the nature of experience and reality rather than, y'know, a story. Layers of confusion build and opinions that once were entirely convincing become doubtable and strange. It does get a bit tiresome towards the end as yet another new person appears and you brace yourself for another head****, but this is probably the desired effect as the viewer, like our hero, attempts to escape the dream.
You could laugh at the film's somewhat pretentious pop-philosophy but for some reason I didn't. The message, if any, seems to be about engaging with the strangeness of life - living lucidly. "I've learnt to go salsa dancing with my confusion," says one of the maddest / sanest characters. His philosophy is something my primary school teachers would never have imparted: "I've come to think of myself as a character in someone else's dream - that's self awareness."
Rgds,
David
http://www.ugccrawley.com/waking_life.htm
Following ripped from a review cos I can't be bothered to write :)
Waking Life uses new techniques of animation - first shot on digital film, then computer animated by a team of artists in varied styles. The results are dizzying and weightless, while bypassing the too-perfect quality of some regular animation. Tables and chairs float, eyes literally pop out of heads and thoughts become visible. It is meant as a companion piece to 1991's Slacker, and like that film consists of a series of vignettes containing unusual characters connected only by the mainly silent protagonist - only it has moved on from the high school kids of Dazed and Confused and the slackers of Slacker to a world of over-educated, over-analytical twenty- and thirtysomething eccentrics and preachers. Moving swimmingly through contextless meetings these characters spout articulate, uninterrupted theories and ideas about existentialism, evolution and the dreamworld.
"We're all theory and no action" muses one character, aptly. But this isn't a problem, as the film is an exploration of the nature of experience and reality rather than, y'know, a story. Layers of confusion build and opinions that once were entirely convincing become doubtable and strange. It does get a bit tiresome towards the end as yet another new person appears and you brace yourself for another head****, but this is probably the desired effect as the viewer, like our hero, attempts to escape the dream.
You could laugh at the film's somewhat pretentious pop-philosophy but for some reason I didn't. The message, if any, seems to be about engaging with the strangeness of life - living lucidly. "I've learnt to go salsa dancing with my confusion," says one of the maddest / sanest characters. His philosophy is something my primary school teachers would never have imparted: "I've come to think of myself as a character in someone else's dream - that's self awareness."
Rgds,
David