Review of Waking Life

Like an alcoholic must hit rock bottom usually to kick the habit. To escape your ego perhaps you have to see it at its most absurd? This film takes you on an exploration of the emptiness of the ego. Richard's art is in the space he allows all these seemingly disparate ideas to inhabit. A lessor director would have played favorites and mocked certain ideas. Not Richard all the views in the film inhabit their space in the film. Attacking ideas by grasping onto the opposite idea is a trap of the mind, a trick that allows the ego to regain control over you, and it is one thing that Richard never indulges in.

It is conflicting ideas that divide us in camps that cause conflict. Showing these divisions at their most absurd cannot help but demand the viewer ask themselves what is the unifying force?

A lot of people find the film pretentious and yes a lot of the ideas in the film are pretentious and overwrought but that doesn't make the film these things.

A lot of people get hung up in the ideas in the film. But they're clearly and literally all cartoons.

The film lays down the hammer on itself late in the game, telling the viewer to just snap out of it, wake up and embrace life. The whole thing, put the divisions aside and suck on the marrow of life.

This is quite a revelatory twist and the deft way the film hides its intentions until late in the game is quite delicious.

Lovely film.