Starring: Trevor Jack Brooks, Lorelei Linklater, Wiley Wiggins, Timothy “Speed” Levitch, Alex Jones, Ethan Hawke

Directed By: Richard Linklater

God Like Scene from Waking Life

Unbelievable

This is the premise of this ultra heady unforgettable cult movie. The films falls into the laps of the mind of a protagonist who seems to be in a lucid dream state. The animation in this gives us a feel of a constant dream like state. Most of the film comprises of head shots and people who ponder over some extremely hard core Philosophical questions. Many of the sketches just keep transforming without once knowledge. There are a lot of references and info wars happening in the background. One of my favorites is the one dealing with how can you tell if you’re dreaming or not? The whole premise of the sketch is about things that we seem to always come across but never really look into seriously. Another beautiful sketch is the one that tells us about how we are perceived at various stages of our life. It just begins with a simple examination of a person’s picture and it turns into something that leaves nothingness thrown out the back door.

We are constantly thrown with info about issues that have transcended this world for ages. It is true that most of respond to all the stimuli and give it our best shot to make a difference. But these are more of the ramblings of things that never really happened but were always there in each and every one of us. We are capable of such coherent thoughts. We humans are in a constant state of playing roles. Roles that are given to us and we abide by it to death do us part. But when these roles seem to be just figments of our own memory that is when we seem to question its purpose. The film questions the central ideas of the ceteris paribus. The arguments discussed in this film are more of the cerebral kind. The only disadvantage many viewers might feel is the constant change of topics that might put many off. This is a movie that carefully uses sound to visually make us understand age old philosophies like existentialism and several others. But it wants to emphasis its importance by talking about the greatness and the power of the medium. But so many movies like the Passion of Jean of Arc had expressed with so little sound and just with the use of the face of the character. The conversations which two of the characters have on Andre Bazin were one of the strongest points of the film. The idea that cinema is the only medium that could manipulate life is something that we have been thriving to see as writers.

The film keeps traveling around these ideas and it keeps drifting deeper into a flux of information. But there is some sanity in this whole document on the lives of such great thinkers. The director gives a cameo with a conversation about one of his favorite writers Philip K Dick. The whole idea of why we are human and what is our purpose on this planet are discussed with such dexterity it leaves us in a state of constant realization. The films hits several peaks during many of conversation and also used the animation of objects to give it a feel of time loss. Many theories of whether the protagonist has dreamed his own death begin to creep by the end of the film. But by then the film reaches a crescendo of thought and we feel a mental rush unlike anything seen on celluloid.

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