Waking Life

[SandRider]

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/wakinglife/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

this is a movie from 2001 that's been on IFC this year.

I think I've seen it about 10 times now. I'm wondering if anyone
else here has seen it, and their thought, esp Game Player - I'd
like to hear your take on it.

and NO SPOILERS for those who haven't seen it - you'll know the
spoiler I mean, the last few seconds of the film where we discover
the truth of dreaming ....

[nymphitz]

Big fan. Each time I watch I gather something new from it. Really makes a person think.
Great to watch in any "state of mind."

[inhuien]

Thanks for the tip, I've not seen it but you guys dig it and so do rotten tomatoes and imdb (I can't recall both sites rating the same film highly). The synopsis sounds very interesting, I'll give it a whirl. Cheers me dears.

[Seraphan]

Just finished watching it for the first time, i really have to watch it again but it's definitely one of the best movies i've ever seen. It's great brain food, mmm yum!
Thanks SandRider, for sharing this movie.

[nymphitz]

Awesome Seraphan! What part really made you stop and ponder? Lets discuss.

(This thread has made me want to watch it again.)

[Omphalos]

Never even heard of it, but it looks like its right up my alley.

[lotek]

same here thanks for bringing this to attention, sounds interesting!

[trang]

Heard of but never watched, will pursue it, always great to get a good movie reccomendation, thanks SR!

[Seraphan]

Awesome Seraphan! What part really made you stop and ponder? Lets discuss.

(This thread has made me want to watch it again.)

Several, i pulled back sometimes because i would start thinking about some of those pieces of information but if i had to pick one, i'd pick three:
- The scene with the couple in bed where they talk about collective memory;
- The scene with the old man in the blue shirt and white hair "So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question and that's this: Which is the most univeral human characteristic, fear or laziness?";
- The entire scene where the main character visits a house with the three guys in it, the one with the long hair, the other playing what looks like a cavaquinho (i only know the portuguese name for that instrument) and the one that talks about recognizing and controling dreams.

But all the issues in the movie are equaly interesting and i can talk about those if you wish.
But first of all i ask you the same you asked me:
"What part really made you stop and ponder?"

[nymphitz]

I love the scene with the couple in bed. "Death and Reality." With a bit of a twist I've often felt the same way. I feel like I'm still a young child, asleep on the top bunk and everything I've experienced in the last 15+ years is all but mere minutes of dream consciousness. [A second of dream consciousness is infinitely longer then waking consciousness.] I often wonder when I will wake up, and when I do; will I remember?... I'm not sure I want to.

(Which makes me pull thought from the scene with the 3 men in a room; "Dreams.")
The first man goes on to say: "Dreams are real only as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same about life."

On one side of things, this dream I imagine my life to exist from will at some point end. I will wake up and this life will be over. Leaving room for a completely different life to come into existence. On the other side; Will I have to die in this dream, in order to wake up to reality?

(I'm aware of how incredibly bizarre that entire thought process sounds.)

Another part that makes me think each time I see it; When he is sitting, talking to a women about how language was created as a way to transcend isolation and connect people. She goes on to list the steps in which we comprehend conversations and how no one can possibly understand the situations being told, to the same degree as the person telling it. Understanding pulls from a multitude of different experiences. No one persons experiences are the same as another, giving each person a different outlook/ understanding of a situation.

[Seraphan]

Bizarre? I dont think so.

In the scene with the couple, when she talks about a long dream and when you wake up it has only passed like 10 to 15 minutes, that happens to me a lot and i have thought about it because often when i dream i get a sense of it being real, even when sometimes there are absurd things hapening, but yet i dont question them.

So before that and watching this movie i was convinced that the human being can distiguish reality from dreams simply because we are born with the faculties to discern them, but this of course was wrong of me to conclude simply because only when i'm awake (in most cases at least) am i aware that what i had previously been through was a dream. It's like you realised that you switched realities only because of that switch you go through when you wake up.

The language bit, i went to bed yesterday after watching the movie and posting here, it was very close to 5:00am and still i found myself fighting sleep by thinking about that scene.
I have thought a lot about language, i've been going around with it in my head many times and yeah, one of the things i thought about before even watching the film was that our language, even though it has a espicific definition in collected dictionaries, it's meaning really resonates in diferent ways with diferent people, we react diferently to a word being used in a specific phrase, our comprehension, (or percieved comprehension) depends a lot on it.

If i said i understand exactly what you mean here:

On one side of things, this dream I imagine my life to exist from will at some point end. I will wake up and this life will be over. Leaving room for a completely different life to come into existence. On the other side; Will I have to die in this dream, in order to wake up to reality?

I would be lying, i cant understand completely, you're talking about a level of perception and thought that i cant jump to, your entire language system is different from mine in different ways simply because our lives are different, we grew up differently, you see and percieve things differently than i do.
So yeah, when our language tries to reach into those so called abstract ideas using words that are used to describe concrete things, we falter in some way.

Now i'm not saying "Well i have absolutly no clue to what you're talking about" only that i've never had that exact thought experience that you have, so obviously my comprehention of you is limited to what our language conveys.

Sorry for the long post.

Added: BTW, what did you made up of the scene about Free Will?

SandRider, when are you going to post your thoughts about it (the film)?

[nymphitz]

In the scene with the couple, when she talks about a long dream and when you wake up it has only passed like 10 to 15 minutes, that happens to me a lot and i have thought about it because often when i dream i get a sense of it being real, even when sometimes there are absurd things hapening, but yet i dont question them.

Frequently happens to myself as well. I have terrible night terrors, on the nights that I awake screaming, it is usually only a few moments after I have fallen asleep. (if I awake at all.) I agree, it feels so incredibly real; probably where the fear comes from. Sleep is such an absurd process.

So before that and watching this movie i was convinced that the human being can distiguish reality from dreams simply because we are born with the faculties to discern them... It's like you realised that you switched realities only because of that switch you go through when you wake up.

I think that's what the 1st man in the room of 3; in "Dreams." was getting at... If we didn't go through that switch, we'd be forever questioning our reality. (ie: Thinking my last 15+ years are all a dream...) At some point we just stop questioning it, and take it at face value. (Who knows if its right or wrong.)

You, not completely understanding my thought process; is exactly what that scene is about. (To my understanding anyways...) We expect people to understand us, as if they too were walking in our shoes. Which only works to a point, because as you said; our lives are different, we grew up differently and therefor perceive things differently.

I find that scene so hard to wrap my mind around, because it makes me question all the conversations I've had. (Thinking the person I was talking to, completely understood the ideas/ emotions and thoughts expressed to the same degree I meant to express them.) When there is no way they could have.

* I'll get back to you on the free will scene, have to re-watch it.

[SandRider]

I can't really discuss my favorite part of the film w/o the Spoiler -

while I enjoyed all the scenes, and pondering all the dense philosophical ideas tossed around,
the first time I saw it I was kinda bored - it seemed like some pretentious student film where
some smart-ass philosophy major just took alot of the stuff he'd been reading and strung it
together, hanging it on the vehicle of this kid's dreams. I thought it was just some interesting
mental masturbation, heading towards no real conclusion ..... and I was wrong. (I like being wrong,
too; keeps me on my toes and boosts my faith in humanity)

for some reason I can't really pin down, my favorite scene seems to the one between the
two guys at the table, the one doing most of the talking about film, then getting into the
"God Moment" thing. (maybe this reminds me of Ginsberg, I don't know)




after several viewings, too, I began to appreciate the juxtaposition of philosophical ideas -
there are several different schools of thought about humanity, the gods & the universe
intertwined here, some very contradictory.

and I really like the change of animation styles from scene to scene. This is the clincher for
me. I don't think the film would have kept and held my attention over and over with just one
animation style.



edit: also, that the film was made by Austin kids and is set in Austin.

[Drunken Idaho]

Wasn't it Richard Linklater, director of A Scanner Darkly (extremely similar style) and Dazed and Confused (much of the same cast)? I heard he shot it all on cheap camcorders and had several animators rotoscope it in various styles.

But yeah, I saw this one years ago. I actually bought it at one point, based on my first viewing of it. My experience was pretty much the opposite of yours, Sandrider. Loved it at first, got me into lucid dreaming and stuff. But I tried watching it a second or third time, and I found it really dull. Some of the long conversation scenes aren't as good as the others, and the animation begins to seem somewhat gimmicky.

[SandChigger]

It runs together with A Scanned Darkly in my head.

I rented and watched Scanner during a trip back to the States a few summers back, even though I really don't care much for rotoscoping, but hey, it was Dick, right? (I know there are some other big Dick fans here. )

A few years back, for some reason (maybe the 2006 release of Scanner?), Fox Japan was hyping Waking Life out the wazoo. It was like they were running a trailer almost EVERY commercial break. That kind of shit generally puts me off anything, no matter how good it is. So...

like some pretentious student film where some smart-ass philosophy major just took alot of the stuff he'd been reading and strung it together, hanging it on the vehicle of this kid's dreams. I thought it was just some interesting mental masturbation, heading towards no real conclusion ...

I can understand this point of view.

[SwordMaster]

the truth of dreaming? how about you shut the fuck up you crack pot jew

[Freakzilla]

the truth of dreaming? how about you shut the fuck up you crack pot jew

That's enough.

[SandRider]

b& nao ?

[Drunken Idaho]

[SandRider]

It runs together with A Scanned Darkly in my head.

like some pretentious student film where some smart-ass philosophy major just took alot of the stuff he'd been reading and strung it together, hanging it on the vehicle of this kid's dreams. I thought it was just some interesting mental masturbation, heading towards no real conclusion ...

I can understand this point of view.

and now back to regular programming ...

but it does head towards a "conclusion", or atleast a "revelation", in the last scene.

I really liked A Scanner Darkly, altho I'm not a big fan of "rotoscoping".
It's interesting, but I'd've like to seen it done with complete 3D CG, like the Final Fantasy movies -
been waiting for a serious, dramatic, non-SF movie built with a 3D game engine. (maybe a Civil
War movie - I've also been waiting for a CGI Civil War movie ala Troy or LOTR -
I want to see a battlefield with a hundred thousand troops- altho Cold Mountain and the
Crater scene at Petersburg was pretty good)

again tho, the thing about Waking Life that I enjoyed was the change in animation styles
from scene to scene - very representational of actual dreaming, atleast for me.

also still waiting for Game Player's take - haven't seen him posting in awhile, tho ...