3) Waking Life
Few films manage to so patiently and powerfully bring into question the legitimacy of our immediate surroundings like Waking Life. A selection of philosophical musings brought to life by advanced interpolated rotoscoping animation, the movie is fascinating and illuminating without ever coming across as self-righteous. All it wants to do is ask questions and break barriers – and it does this on the surface through use of a innovative animation technique, as well as through the questions that its characters ask in their dialogue.
The movie appears to be one big dream, with the animation refusing to sit still for as little as a second. For the most part, we follow a nameless protagonist played by Wiley Wiggins, who drifts between conversations with intellectuals, and is sometimes never present at all. Every character in Waking Life has something to ponder and something to muse, and we’re sucked into their woozy worlds by the dancing animation (created by filming as normal and then scribbling over the top of the camera footage).
Directed by Richard Linklater – who undoubtedly remains one of the most important filmmakers of our generation –Â Waking Life is colorful and inquisitive from beginning to end; wonderfully recreating the sensation of dreaming with admirable accuracy.
It’s rare to come across a film that makes you want to expand your horizons and take a look at what might lie beyond the surface of ordinary life.
