Waking Life

**Banana** · 09-02-2009 01:48 PM

im sure there was another thread about this but i just watched it and it was an amazing movie and very thought provoking

i want to hear what you guys thought about it if youve seen it

**no-Name** · 09-02-2009 01:59 PM

Originally Posted by Banana

im sure there was another thread about this

**Banana** · 09-02-2009 02:03 PM

DO YOU REALLY HAVE THAT MUCH FREE TIME

but damn i figured only like 10 at least

whatevery

lock or something

i really dont give a shit now

**slash112** · 09-02-2009 03:26 PM

nah man dont lock. peoples opinions change. new people may want to comment too. me for example, i will be watching it soon. i dont want to bump a thread, i hate doing that

**Umbrasquall** · 09-02-2009 05:31 PM

Originally Posted by no-Name

OTL

Way to shoot him down.

**Taosaur** · 09-02-2009 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by slash112

nah man dont lock. peoples opinions change. new people may want to comment too. me for example, i will be watching it soon. i dont want to bump a thread, i hate doing that

All true and valid points, but...

The Waking Life and Vanilla Sky threads just pop up so often that it's hard to say anything without self-consciously repeating yourself or saying the absurdly obvious. It's like going on a gonzo journalism forum and asking if anyone's seen Fear and Loathing. If you have something specific and remotely original or thought provoking to say on the topic, you might get away with it; otherwise, expect a rain of rotten tomatoes.

Out of charity and because Linklater is perhaps my very favorite film-maker, however, I'll say something about Waking Life ;D

I love the device of introducing ideas and whole philosophies as entities interacting in real spaces, such that one can journey through a "landscape of the mind." The device was employed more playfully and less centrally in David Brin's Uplift books, where "E-space" was a stratum of material reality within which ideas took on often aggressive physical form. Mainly, though, I'm reminded of Hermann Hesse's Magister Ludi, a.k.a. The Glass Bead Game, which I see fitting into Hesse's body of work much as Waking Life fits into Linklater's. Both constitute a thesis work of sorts for the author/director, a highly conceptualized grand tour of their pet themes and influences with plot and characters present only as secondary elements--obligatory stage dressing. In both works, in fact, the central character is neatly but inexplicably subtracted from the scene when the tour is through.

While I like both works quite a bit, and both are arguably the artist's most praised work(Hesse's Siddhartha and Steppenwolf are more widely read, but Magister Ludi won him the Nobel), neither is my favorite by the artist. The works I find more creative and skillful, if less intricate, are those in which both men tie their themes down to well-realized characters with some vested interest in forging a working perspective from the muddle of truths: for Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund, and for Linklater, Before Sunset. Dragging the high concepts down into the struggle of daily life lends them a warmth and human universality that's perhaps lacking in each man's more sprawling and stylized magnum opus.

That's what I think about Waking Life. Today

Thread: Waking Life

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Display

Waking Life

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions