With the AFI Top 100 Movies list complete, we Movie Jerks have decided to start up a list of our own. Essentially each Movie Jerk picks 5 movies that they want others to see. Philosophies differ as to the selection of the 5 movies - some of us chose to pick movies we've never seen, while others picked movies they've seen and want others to see. It's going to be interesting, and on Saturday October 2nd we had our first movie - Waking Life.
Format: Theater in the Garage
Screening Date: 10/3/2010
Run Time: 1 hr 39 min
Director: Richard Linklater
Release Date: 2001
Attendance: Weird Dave, Griffie, Killer Wyrm, Akulas Psyhos (!), Matthew, Trent, Eric, Alaina
Review At A Glance
Enjoyment 7/10
Presentation 7/10
Picked by the whim of a fanciful d10, the Movie Jerk to open the post-AFI list was Alaina. She had yet chosen all of her 5, but she had one in mind right away - Richard Linklater's 2001 under-the-radar movie, Waking Life. I had never heard of this movie before and was told it was about dreams.
And boy was it ever. Not only was it about dreams, but it was filmed as though it were a dream. The techniques Linklater used in this film he would later apply to his more mainstream release A Scanner Darkly. Essentially it's animation over real life (for which I'm sure there's a word for), but Waking Life has a sort of chaos that really captures the feeling of a dream. People warp and shift in strange, almost surreal ways even as you're looking at them and listening to them speak.
Which is something you'd better enjoy, because the movie is really just a series of conversation vignettes between various random people and the main character. Most had interesting things to say and all of the topics centered around dreams or moments in dream, though one particularly confusing section spoke of the Holy Moment. After watching the movie, I'm still not sure what a Holy Moment is - something about realizing that reality is based on the concept of "now" being the only moment where all things exist, and we've created history and time to come to terms with this monumental concept? I think?
It's all very surreal, with everything in a state of constant motion. There are many concepts bandied about the movie through animated (both actually and emotionally) ways, but I still found myself straining to stay interested. Characters would approach the protagonist and start talking with no build-up or introduction and begin to discuss at length something profound about dreams. Who are these people? The protagonist doesn't seem perturbed at their presence or their conversations, simply nodding at various times (or was that the animation jumping around?).
This is a movie that you can pull a lot of different viewpoints from. The one that I found the most interesting, and one that I hadn't really heard before, was that death was simply a constant dream state. If I had to pull a lesson or core concept from the film that would be it, but that may be simply because it was the last of the dream concepts discussed.
Bottom line - if you went and saw Inception and enjoyed the multi-layered dream facet of that movie, I'm confident in saying you'll find most of Waking Life enjoyable, or at least interesting. I'm ... not quite convinced this was a movie in the traditional sense of the word, as there was no story (in the sense of beginning, middle, end) - just conversations of complex dream concepts between various people. Still, interesting and insightful, this "movie" made me think about dreams in a new way, and that's gotta count for something.
2 comments:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/movie?&qsrc=
the holy moment:
one of the characters had just mentioned a specific director that had just converted to an abrahamic religion. that director's philosophy in making films, as described by the character in Waking Life, was that (since everything is a part of God [in his faith]) every scene in a movie was capturing God and God's presence. the character then went on to explain that this philosophy should, theoretically, carry over to real life; each moment in RL is God and God's presence (just as you are, i am, the sky is, gay porn is). since everything is like that, then everything in space time is holy. since space time is holy, every moment is holy. hence, the holy moment. his point was that no one actually acts like every moment of their life is a 'holy moment.'
I'm really sad I missed this one; I had also never heard of "Waking Life." The animation used in "A Scanner Darkly" was my favorite part, and I'm always intrigued by movies about dreams. This one seems really interesting, as I was less drawn in by "Inception"- the dreams in that movie just did not seem that dreamlike to me. A very taut and enjoyable movie, of course, but not really very surreal- a hallmark of actual dreams, in my opinion.
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