The Rick-trospective: Waking Life

In honor of the November 7 release of Paste Movies Editor Michael Dunaway’s documentary 21 Years: Richard Linklater (in which Paste is the media partner), we’re going through the indie master’s entire oeuvre in order, film by amazing film.

With 2001’s Waking Life, Richard Linklater made his most formal inquiry into the Big Questions. Though also his most boldly experimental, the film can be read as something of a companion piece to his 1991 film, Slacker—both generously afford their multiple subjects spacious platforms in which to espouse their views. Waking Life draws upon a method of delivery that more closely matches the ephemeral nature of those intellectual and existential musings, and places the setting—appropriately—inside the dream of an introspective and curious young man.

Employing an economical (the animation team reportedly worked only with basic, retail-level Macs), but ingenious, rotoscopic animation technique pioneered by Art Director Bob Sabiston, Waking Life’s signature visual style is as elegant and variable as the dream world it inhabits. Sometimes wild and chaotic, sometimes gently shifting and tranquil, the choice to digitally paint over the video allowed Linklater the additional freedom to interpret the segment jumps both fluidly and with vivid, expressionistic flair, calling out artistic movements spanning over a century.

Linklater has explored many of these questions before, mostly with the aforementioned Slacker, but the decision to animate the proceedings, with changeable styles to pair with the monologues and discussions, makes the film comparable to a more “serious” academic prospect: the Fine Art Show. For all its deliberation (and sometimes, angry hand-wringing), Waking Life is highly accessible, but it clearly reads more as a guided tour—a well-curated exhibition for whom the gallery’s guest is the Dreamer the film follows.