I understand why we watched Waking Life, but I wish we didn't.

I like philosophy. I took a philosophy class last semester, and I think discussing that stuff is really interesting. An entire 2 hours of just philosophical monologues, though, sounds pretty boring to me. Especially if most of the characters are pretentious and make no sense. Especially if the entire film is animated in a disgusting, rotoscopic drunk-vision. I'm not kidding when I say, that film almost made me vomit. I had a headache for hours afterward. It made me feel like I was perpetually in a fever dream, and that feeling didn't go away for two days. I had a nightmare that we had to finish it.

I guess it did say some interesting things, though.

Comments

  1. jasonhSeptember 16, 2018 at 11:23 AM

    Wow, I'm sorry you had such a strong negative reaction. I love the film, and the tone of the film (there's a kind of calm mixed with a brutality, an everyday mundane challenging notions of the boundaries of consciousness), and while the floating rotoscope animation isn't visually stunning, it was technically sophisticated for it's time and worked to pull the film into a kind of dreamlike aesthetic. Vive la difference.

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  2. Jyasi NagelSeptember 16, 2018 at 2:25 PM

    I agree Corey. I think all the philosophy just being shoved in our face was hard to stomach at times. The philosophy itself didn't even seem to be the point though, it was just the concept of lucid dreaming and exploring the inside of someone's mind and their unconscious. However, two hours of monologuing just to prove some metaphorical point is rather boring.

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    Replies
    1. Tyler JennesSeptember 16, 2018 at 3:48 PM

      While I totally agree with art being subjective, I personally found myself enjoying the film. I also have to admit my own bias, as I'm also a fan of the director's other work, in which long philosophical dialogues aren't uncommon. The way I see it, this is less a conventional narrative film then it is a cinematic experiment. The fact that Linklater and his crew were able to achieve such a distinctive look that I believe was able to match the script so well is something I find commendable. It's objectively a unique type of film, and one that I've enjoyed watching more than once, but again, I do get why it can be polarizing to some. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's not a bad thing. Hell, if we all liked and disliked the same stuff, it'd be a pretty boring world.

      Delete
  3. UnknownSeptember 16, 2018 at 3:45 PM

    I thought the animation of the film, while eerie and off-putting, aids the film in it's exploration of the concept of the mind when it isn't conscious. By giving nothing on the screen a solid structure, it illustrates the uncertainty of a dream. Nothing is in a solid state, as in it could change at any moment rather than being grounded in reality. And while I understand it may not be the most comfortable thing to look at (which is a subjective topic and not really a choice we make), I still think it reinforces the idea that the things we are seeing happen onscreen may not be as real as they are made out to be.

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  4. ReneeSeptember 16, 2018 at 4:43 PM

    I actually was really uncomfortable in the beginning, as I am anytime I watch a rotoscoped film. But then I got used to it, and found that the animation actually pulled me more into the story. I think the film would have been excruciatingly boring without the animation, because it forced you to pay attention. It was a more visual point of what was already being said on screen. It was a cool experiment and actually made me want to finish the movie.

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