Philosophy of Film

Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

The topic of this discussion might more aptly be "Philosophy in Film" rather than "Philosophy of Film," but oh well. 

When I first saw Richard Linklater's Waking Life I absolutely loved it. Ideas! Talking! Dreams! Rotoscoping! But now I'm not so sure. I've heard it called "an animated philosophy 101 class," and "intellectual masturbation." These criticisms are starting to seem viable. What does everyone think, does all the idea-talk do anything beyond waxing philosophical about, ya know, life and stuff?

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

Those darn prepositions.  It's easy to get hung up on them.

I think it would be easier to criticize a movie like this if it seemed to carry more pretense.  Richard Linklater has said that the construction of the movie is just ideas and scenes that he either could never find ways to fit into other films or were meant for other films but never made the final cut.  It's a hodge podge script-wise, and it's that way stylistically.  Almost every scene was animated by a different artist.  It's really just a series of short films that are loosely connected.  Luckily the plot that connects them is just as mysterious and ethereal in a way.  This is as opposed to some other films like Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 which seemed like a bunch of stylistically different short films but were often forced too hard into a more tangible narrative.  Or if you look at theme as opposed to style, it's opposed to the Matrix movies, especially Reloaded and Revolutions which tried to cram as many philosophical concepts into the story and dialogue as possible.  It's often too obvious and doesn't fit so nicely together.  That may also be the case with Waking Life, but in Waking Life those aspects are openly celebrated as what the film is actually about.

I really don't see much difference between Waking Life and other Linklater films like Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Slacker, and probably Tape too although I haven't seen that last one.  If you look at all of these movies, including Waking Life, there are definitely philosophical discussions but almost just as much character studies, wordplay, poetry, and just interesting stories.

I suppose some of it may be "intellectual masturbation".  To me that phrase could mean a couple of different things.  But I think in this case, even if it is present in this film, I don't take the phrase pejoratively.

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

Godard's more rambling, political flings like Tout Va Bien, Sympathy for the Devil and more recently Notre Musique are in this class of 'movies of ideas". For that matter, isn't My Dinner with Andre the most popular movie in this vein? I love these sorts of films. I've watched Waking Life a couple times now and it's a treat because it doesn't let me be passive to the experience. I have to engage intellectually with the subject matter or I'm just lost, staring blankly at the screen until I fall asleep. I think that's okay. It's a different sort of engagement than most people expect.

 On the flipside, I found What the #$*! Do We Know?!  to be completely tiresome and even condescending. If you're going to throw me in the deep water, save the water wings.

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

quint:

Godard's more rambling, political flings like Tout Va Bien, Sympathy for the Devil and more recently Notre Musique are in this class of 'movies of ideas". For that matter, isn't My Dinner with Andre the most popular movie in this vein? I love these sorts of films. I've watched Waking Life a couple times now and it's a treat because it doesn't let me be passive to the experience. I have to engage intellectually with the subject matter or I'm just lost, staring blankly at the screen until I fall asleep. I think that's okay. It's a different sort of engagement than most people expect.

 On the flipside, I found What the #$*! Do We Know?!  to be completely tiresome and even condescending. If you're going to throw me in the deep water, save the water wings.

Yeah I forgot about My Dinner With Andre.  Amazing how a feature length movie with just two people sitting and talking in a restaurant with no other interruption or plot can be so much more engrossing than the majority of films that are given astronomical budgets.

I've seen What the #$*! Do We Know?! and not only did I find the narrative portion of the film to be both pretentious and pandering (and WTF was with that horrible wedding scene with the dancing CGI blobs?), everything that the "experts" were saying had no central theme and were often at odds with eachother.  I couldn't believe it at the end when they showed these people's credentials and the one who spoke the most and with the most authority was a chiropractor.

But the most rediculous part of all was Ramtha!  Here's a description of who this person is from wikipedia:

Ramtha is an entity that JZ Knight, an American self-claimed spiritual medium claims to channel. According to Knight, Ramtha was a Lemurian warrior who raised an army and fought against the tyrants of the times, the Atlanteans, over 35,000 years ago. Ramtha led an army of over 2.5 million across the continents, conquering 2/3 of the known world, which was going through cataclysmic geological changes. According to his teachings, he led the army for ten years until he was betrayed and almost killed.

Knight further claims that Ramtha spent the next seven years in isolation recovering and observing nature, among other things. He later mastered many skills, including foresight and out-of-body experiences, until he led his army to the Indus River when aged in his late seventies. Ramtha taught them everything he knew for 120 days, before he ascended before them. He made a promise to his army that he would come back to teach them again, and so he appeared to JZ Knight in 1977 to re-educate the "forgotten gods", those who had forgotten themselves and their divinity.

When you dig deeper and see how the movie was made and funded, it appears as though the movie is basically a big advertisement to get people more interested in this woman so that a few suckers might shell out some cash for some of the products and conventions she does.

There's interesting stuff about it at Roger Ebert's site too if you do some research.

Now I'm all about many many of the things proposed in this movie, but overall this movie is just rediculous.

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

I suppose it may show a certain amount of shallowness or something worse, but after seeing the trailer for Waking Life, I simply could not imagine seeing it; solely from the standpoint that I could not stand the aesthetics of the film animation and felt I would literally go nuts having to watch it and having to sit through it.

I found the look extremely 'crude' and without any beauty; a great big 'uggghhh' ( A Scanner Darkly was fine however, I loved the film, but I still do not prefer that style/type of animation). Now due entirely to this discussion thread, Waking Life goes right back on to my queue. I thought Slacker great.

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

Puhnner:

I suppose it may show a certain amount of shallowness or something worse, but after seeing the trailer for Waking Life, I simply could not imagine seeing it; solely from the standpoint that I could not stand the aesthetics of the film animation and felt I would literally go nuts having to watch it and having to sit through it.

I found the look extremely 'crude' and without any beauty; a great big 'uggghhh' ( A Scanner Darkly was fine however, I loved the film, but I still do not prefer that style/type of animation). Now due entirely to this discussion thread, Waking Life goes right back on to my queue. I thought Slacker great.

Maybe the film is about you going nuts!  In that case the movie may be both cause and explination.

Re: Waking Life: An animated Philosophy 101?

going, going, gone, gondhi...