Waking Life (2001) on Netflix
R20011h 39mAnimationDramaFantasy
A young man drifts through dreamlike realities where one event slides into the next. He listens as scholars, artists, restaurant-goers and friends talk about free will and the meaning of life.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.6/1069,919 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
An unnamed young man lives a life without transitions between events, moving through dreamlike realities. He listens as scholars, artists, restaurant-goers and friends talk about metaphysics, free will, social philosophy and the meaning of life. Other scenes leave him out entirely and follow an isolated person, a group or a couple speaking from a disembodied perspective. The talks also touch on lucid dreaming, existentialism, situationist politics, posthumanity and André Bazin's writing on film, and reference intellectual and literary figures by name.
Cast
- Trevor Jack Brooksas Young Boy Playing Paper Game
- Glover Gillas Accordion Player
- Lara Hicksas Violin Player
- Ames Asbellas Viola Player
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Waking Life (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a rotoscoping program that blends key frame vector shapes and uses virtual "layers", designed specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston. The animators worked on standard Apple Macintosh computers.
- Linklater had animators overlay the live-action footage with animation that roughly approximates what was filmed, and employed a variety of artists, so that the film's feel continually changes and produces a surreal, shifting dreamscape.
- Linklater put Alex Jones in the film, and in a 2018 interview with IndieWire he said of the decision, "I just thought he was kind of funny." He had never imagined Jones would one day be taken seriously and did not think much about including him at the time.
