Line #38 WesternAnimation/WakingLife


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/waking_life_778.jpg]]
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3	->''"Dream is destiny."''
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5	''Waking Life'' is a 2001 [[{{Rotoscoping}} semi-animated]] film by Creator/RichardLinklater. The plot follows a young man walking through a lucid dream where he observes and enters into dialogue about lofty philosophical concepts and theories. The film itself was initially shot on digital video, and then drawn over by a team of animators. The resulting look is fairly unique, and manages to evoke dream-like imagery on a shoestring budget.
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7	Despite lacking a traditional plot, visuals, or even trained actors[[note]]excluding Creator/EthanHawke, Creator/JulieDelpy, Wiley Wiggins...[[/note]], the film won a great deal of praise for its innovation and unique look. Creator/RogerEbert added it to his list of Great Movies in 2009.
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10	!!This rotoscoped animation provides examples of:
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12	* AmbiguouslyBrown: The Dreamer, played by Wiggins.
13	* ArcWords: "Dream is destiny."
14	* AllJustADream: Inverted. It's the point of the plot, not a plot point.
15	** Played with by Speed Levitch:
16	--->'''Speed:''' And as one realizes... that one is a dream figure in another person's dream, '''''that''''' is self-awareness!
17	* ArmorPiercingQuestion:
18	-->'''Louis Mackey:''' 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 universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?
19	* AuthorAppeal: Richard Linklater is very passionate about philosophy. He's also admitted that his lucid dreaming played a part in the writing. His last scene has him discussing Creator/PhilipKDick's ''Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said''. He went on to adapt Dick's ''Literature/AScannerDarkly'', using the same rotoscoped animation.
20	* BookEnds: The beginning and end of the movie take place at the same house and the same car. [[spoiler: Only in the end, the Dreamer is unable to hold onto the car door.]]
21	* CallBack: When the dream transforms into a nightmare, several characters reappear as different characters.
22	* TheCameo:
23	** Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy play their characters from ''Film/BeforeSunrise'' and ''Film/BeforeSunset'' in one scene, also written and directed by Linklater.
24	** As mentioned above, Alex Jones, the fringe political radio host, basically plays himself for one scene.
25	** Two {{Creator Cameo}}s; Linklater is the other hitcher on the boatship at the beginning and the pinball player that speaks with the main character near the end.
26	** The woman who talks about her life in the past tense played Wiggins' mother in ''Film/DazedAndConfused''.
27	** Steven Prince appears as the man with the gun talking to the bartender, best known for his associate with Creator/MartinScorsese, and whose [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077157/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_3 stories]] were "borrowed" by Creator/QuentinTarantino for scenes in ''Film/PulpFiction''.
28	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}:
29	** The old man on the telephone pole. Deconstructed by a group of characters who muse they're no better than the old man:
30	--->'''Man #1:''' Stupid bastard.
31	--->'''Man #2:''' No worse than us. He's all action, no theory. We'll all theory, no action.
32	** Speed Levitch isn't acting in the film - he's as off-kilter in person as in the film. In fact, several hours were shot of Speed's rambling, and edited to make sense.
33	* ContemplateOurNavels: Pretty much the whole point.
34	* CreatorCameo: Linklater, twice. {{Lampshaded}} by The Dreamer.
35	* CreepyMonotone: "I remember where I came from and how I became a human. Why I hung around. And now my final departure is scheduled. This way out. Escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but infinity."
36	* DeadAllAlong: One interpretation, but by no means the only one. The Dreamer frets about it near the end, telling his fears to [[CreatorCameo the pinball playing man.]]
37	-->[[spoiler: '''TV Woman:''' All through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream? That, after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called, "a dream body"? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body.]]
38	* TheDeadCanDance: [[spoiler: The waltzers near the end of the film seem to be engaged in a ''danse macabre''.]]
39	* DerangedAnimation: Done specifically to emulate the feeling that you're dreaming.
40	* DespairEventHorizon: When The Dreamer [[DreamWithinADream wakes up from a dream to find himself in another dream]] once too often, he despairs and [[spoiler: starts to think he's already dead.]]
41	* DreamWithinADream: The entire film.
42	* EmpathicEnvironment: As The Dreamer grows depressed, and the subject starts to broach the subject of [[spoiler: death]], the world similarly becomes darker and more forboding, as the soundtrack starts to become more dissonant and threatening.
43	* {{Foreshadowing}}: One character says that to say "yes" to one instant is to say "yes" to eternity. [[spoiler: According to the pinball player, saying "yes" is ''death''.]]
44	%% GainaxEnding
45	* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Steven Prince accidentally shoots the bartender to see if his gun's still loaded, complete with WrittenSoundEffect. [[spoiler: The bartender gets him back.]]
46	* MindScrew: Much of the film, though one scene in particular is notable. The protagonist is discussing a woman's plan for a "real-life" soap opera when he realizes he's dreaming again. He then asks her what it's like being a dream, inflicting this on the woman (her dialogue becomes ''much'' less composed). She still challenges The Dreamer:
47	-->'''Soap Opera Woman:''' We seem to think we're so limited by the world and--and the confines, but we're really just creating them. And you keep trying to figure it out, but it seems like now that you know that what you’re doing is dreaming, you can do whatever you want to. You're, uh, dreaming, but you’re awake. You have, um, so many options, and that's what life is about.
48	** Then, when he says that he'd been passive (in the first half of the movie), just listening to other characters orate:
49	--->'''Soap Opera Woman:''' It's not necessarily passive to not respond verbally. We're communicating on so many levels simultaneously. Perhaps you're--you're perceiving directly.
50	* MoodWhiplash: All of the place. You go from [[Film/BeforeSunset Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy]] in bed dreamily discussing reincarnation to a red-bodied prisoner screaming about revenge to David Sosa calmly discussing free will to Alex Jones yelling about corporate slavery through a car bullhorn, for instance.
51	* NamelessNarrative: Nobody in the film has a name, and everything is so random that you can't even give most of the people a nickname. The credits have to use pictures of the characters for identifying the actors. It's even a minor plot point that the main character can't remember his name ([[TruthInTelevision which is also pretty hard to do in your real dreams]]).
52	** EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The main character is called "The Dreamer."
53	** Creator/StevenSoderbergh [[AsHimself plays himself]] and is listed as such in the credits.
54	* [[RedEyesTakeWarning Red Body Take Warning]]: The prisoner's entire ''body'' is red, an external representation of his rage.
55	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The prisoner fantasizes about this in very violent detail.
56	* {{Rotoscoping}}: How the style was created. Mini DV footage was shot and a team of animators animated over it to give the feeling that you're dreaming along with the protagonist.
57	* SchroedingersButterfly: The film is a series of psychedelic sequences which mostly feature the main character as an observer, and many of them segue with him waking up yet again.
58	* SeinfeldianConversation: Averted with great prejudice.
59	* SlidingScaleOfFreeWillVsFate: One of the topics covered. When David Sosa brings up quantum mechanics, and how particles seem random, he proclaims, "Should our freedom just be a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That just seems like it's ''worse''. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic, physical machine than just some random swerving!"
60	* TheSingularity: Early in the film, the protagonist listens to a man give a lengthy rant on this topic.
61	-->'''Eamonn Healy:''' If you look at the time-scale that's involved here: two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, a hundred-thousand years for mankind as we know it, you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then, when you get to agriculture, when you get to the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution, you're looking at ten thousand years, four hundred years, a hundred and fifty years. You're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time.
62	* SpeechCentricWork: Various characters talking - indeed, in some cases ranting - for the duration of the running time. That's it.
63	* StealthParody: Possibly used against Alex Jones. While he is yelling one of his monologues over a car loudspeaker, the animation slowly increases his skin hue to brighter, darker shades of red. This could just be a simple exaggeration used in many pieces of animation, or a reference to the imprisoned psychopath who is shown in the same way earlier in the movie.
64	** However, it may just be because he is behind a windshield which has a severe glare; only the general features of Jones could be seen in the original Mini-DV video.
65	* TheseusShipParadox: One segment with two women taking about being in their fifties, and that how people have to make up stories about who they were when they were younger. They note that the human body is constantly regenerating cells, so they're both completely new people several times over since they were infants.
66	* [[TranshumanAliens Transhuman Alien]]: Implied by the Creepy Monotone speaker.
67	* YouLookFamiliar: In-universe. Everyone from the first scene (in the "Boat Car") reappear again as different characters.
68	----
69	''Super perfundo on the early eve of your day...''

Context WesternAnimation / WakingLife