Waking Life: a guided tour in lieu of a review

An in-depth movie review written in 2003, but never posted publicly until now.  Note that there is a lot of commentary here that's from a very specific perspective, a perspective that had been influential up to my early 30s, but which I largely moved beyond in the two decades since.  Nonetheless, I'm going to post it as it was written 20 years ago.

On one level, WAKING LIFE is a film that explores various correspondences between dreaming and waking reality.  On another level, this is very much a film about the perennial search for a more vivid and authentic experience of being alive.  Employing the plotless, peripatetic format used in his first film, SLACKER (1991), Richard Linklater allows us to follow an unnamed young man (Wiley Wiggins) as he encounters a variety of characters — from the most ordinary to the most color — who expound their thoughts and theories on life, death, dreaming and the relationship between mind and reality.1   As we come to learn along the way, our protagonist is finding himself unable to wake up from a sort of perpetual dream state.  Each time he’s sure he’s awoken from the dream, it becomes apparent that he’s still in it.  At one point he confesses: “It’s not like I’m having a bad dream; it’s a great dream.  It’s unlike any dream I’ve had before; it’s like THE dream.  It’s like I’m being prepared for something.”

As might be anticipated, the notions and theories expressed during the course of this movie vary as much in their depth as in their subject or aim.  Some of the ideas are  socio-political, others scientific, and still others metaphysical or philosophical.  Of the more meta-philosophical statements presented, there are several that carry the unmistakable ring of authenticity which is the hallmark of true ideas.2 

Since the focus of this film is indeed much more on philosophies than on conventional narrative storytelling, any review of it has to contend with, and focus on, its ideas.  Indeed, I found myself very engaged by the ideas presented during the course of this movie — even when I disagreed with them.  And so, what I would like to do here is to present a sort of selective guided tour of the encounters and discourses presented in WAKING LIFE, along with my own comments and critiques on some of them (in blue texted [brackets]).  In most instances I will merely offer brief summaries and paraphrasing, though some of the comments that I find most valuable and interesting I will quote at length and verbatim.  Also, please note that I’ve employed two separate and independent series of footnotes: those designated by number (1) are for additional comments, textual references and comparisons, while those designated by letter (a) are for performer credits and related behind-the-scenes notes.  The alpha references will follow the numeric references at the end of the piece.

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The film opens with a young girl and boy playing a fortune-telling game.  The game uses a polyhedral origami piece with numbers and colors on the various sides and secret messages underneath, designed to be worn over the fingers and opened and closed in an alternating sequence.  The girl asks the boy to pick a number, then a color, and so on.  After putting the origami through a series of permutations, she opens one part of it to reveal a hidden message for the boy: 

Dream is Destiny.

Later, we join the boy as a grown up on the last leg of a train journey.  His first encounter, outside the train station, is with the talkative drivera of a funny boat-car in which he accepts a ride.  The “captain” of the boat car says it’s “see worthy — as in ‘see with your eyes.’”  He goes on to work the boating/sea-faring theme into a metaphor for living, with statements such as “The sea refuses no river” (go with the flow) and “The ride doesn’t require explanations, just passengers.”

Next, in one of the most balanced and lucid pieces in the film, a philosophy professorb is lecturing about existentialism’s bad rap as a philosophy of despair.  “Sartre, once interviewed, said he’d never really felt despair a day in his life.”3

"I think the real problem is that philosophy since has turned into a kind of despair.  It’s not the existentialist’s despair, it’s a very different kind of academic despair, a kind of cultural despair.  People, for example, do philosophy now as if it’s a kind of mathematics: it’s all technical, it’s all jargon.  It has nothing to do with anything, and in particular it has nothing to do with life."4

He goes on to say that not only is existentialism not about despair, but there’s “a kind of exuberance,” since “your life is yours to create.”  He talks about how contemporary post-modernist philosophies seem to leave out “something essential,” and their reliance on abstractions and reductionist categories tend to offer excuses for the human condition, whereas existentialism encourages the taking of responsibility for how one lives one’s life.

Next is an encounter with a womanc who gives a very interesting talk about the basic inadaquacy of language to convey subjective experience.  Language grew out of a desire to transcend isolation, to connect with others.  But since it’s essentially “inert and dead” it cannot convey the ineffable subtleties of human experience.  I say something about “love” and you say you understand, but how do I know that you understand?  Words can be understood in so many ways.  And yet there are moments when we do connect (almost more in spite of language than because of it), and there’s a feeling of mutual understanding, even spiritual communion.5

[It’s interesting to apply this idea of the inability of words to convey intangibles to the philosophy professor’s statement, concerning how the study and “practice” of philosophy has devolved into a kind of sterile academic fixation on jargon and semiotics.]

A mand is discoursing very animatedly about the evolution of a new organism.  Each stage in man’s development, from biological to anthropological to cultural, has taken less and less time than to come about.  Time scales are inversely telescoping at an exponential rate; at this rate evolutionary advances will soon be visible during one lifetime, etc.  Evolution is working towards a Neo-Human, a New Individuality, towards a “crescendo of human potential” in which “truth, loyalty, justice and freedom” will be the new evolutionary paradigm.6 

[While it is intriguing to consider how rapidly the development of our species has progressed from one rational and technological stage to the next, I don’t think there’s any evidence that we as a species have developed or evolved in any essential way — which is to say, in the sense of having achieved a balance between our physical, emotional, rational and spiritual natures — since the beginning of recorded history.  In fact, there would seem to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary.7]

A brief segment with a mane going on about the self-destructiveness of mankind; how man wants chaos.  It’s the media’s job to acclimate us to the violence in the world, so that it’s more acceptable to us, so that it will cease to matter to us.  He sits down, pours gasoline over himself and sets himself aflame, in a gesture meant to protest his own lack of a voice in society.8 

[This is the first of two or three characters in the film to express profound cynicism and contempt for politics and the media, and rail against what is perceived as the individual’s “lack of a voice” or marginalization in society.9]

A couplef in bed talk about death and reincarnation.  The woman has sometimes observed herself as if from the perspective of an old woman looking back on her life at the point of death.  They speculate about the six to twelve minutes of brain activity that supposedly continues after the cessation of the pulse at death; maybe it’s a period of post-mortem dream consciousness.  “One second in dreams is much longer than one waking second... So six-to-twelve minutes — that could be your whole life!  You could be that old woman looking back on her life.”  They talk about reincarnation, and agree that the “recycled souls” notion doesn’t make sense in light of the population explosion.  One of them suggests that, since we are said to inherit billions of years of “collective memory” on a genetic level, maybe personal accounts of reincarnation are “poetic expression[s] of our collective memory.”

[This whole little sequence struck a chord in me, partly because I’d already thought a great deal about what the brain, teetering at the bio-chemical razor’s edge of death, might tend to do in terms of stretching or freezing time within one’s particular state: perhaps that is the afterlife?  Also, the woman’s practice of observing her life from such a wizened perspective would seem to have great potential as a technique of self-observation, of course with the critical proviso that the intention is to observe and to learn impartially, not to simply stimulate and indulge the emotions with novel imaginings.]

The next sequence at first really seems to come out of left field.  An angry mang is alone in a jail cell, pacing around and cursing the lawyer, the judge, the psychologist and everyone he feels is responsible for putting him there.  He engages in a brutal, minutely detailed, revenge-soaked soliloquy on what he plans to do to all those people when he gets out.

[I’m not sure how much to read into this sequence (e.g., prison as metaphor for the human predicament), but the most disturbing aspect of it wasn’t the man’s anger and violence, but the extent to which I could see these qualities in myself, and in the manifestations of others around me.  Is this man really “someone else” — some deranged fringe-character?]

A young manh talks about Freewill and the fundamental physical laws.  “Who you are is a matter of the free choices you make.”  If we’re just physical systems, where’s the freedom in that?  We’ve simply replaced God’s Will with Nature’s Law.  Quantum theory might provide a loophole, since it’s probabilistic rather than deterministic.  But should our freedom be determined by randomness?  “I’d rather be a gear in some big deterministic machine than just some random swerving.  We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons, not just bodies... And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom... and trying to understand individuality.”

[There are a couple of things to point out here.  First, the quote about “free choices” is, I think, both true and not true, depending on the level at which the statement is understood.  Superficially, we do have and make “free choices” all the time which in their turn define our personalities and lifestyles.  But from a deeper perspective, the idea that we possess free anything — especially something like Will — is perhaps the greatest fiction we believe about ourselves, although this situation has less to do with “determinism” than with a kind of psycho-spiritual behaviorism.10  As long as we’re not free of internal division within our own natures, how can we have freedom to act with intentionality and consistancy of purpose in the world?  Without free attention — an attention which is not allowed the compulsion to wander from one object or situation to the next, and from one random thought or fixation to the next — how can any of our “choices” be conscious?11

The other point concerns the “I’d rather be a gear...” statement. It’s perhaps a somewhat sinister irony that he already is the gear in the machine; we all are; we’re also the random particle darting about.  The question is, what are our real possiblities for transcending that condition?]

A mani is driving down the street in a car with loudspeakers on the roof, blasting a fulminating diatribe against the socio-political powers-that-be who seek to enslave us with their political ideologies and rhetoric.  “I want freedom, and so should you!”  We’re being conditioned on a mass scale by a “corporate slave-state.”  “Democrat-Liberal/Republican-Conservative, what a bunch of garbage! ...[They’re] two sides of the same coin! — two management teams bidding for control; the C.E.O. job of Slavery Incorporated!”

[It’s interesting to compare one’s reaction to this angry man versus the angry man in prison.  Both of their complaints are similar while using different terms — Enslavement vs. Imprisonment, Political vs. Personal, Revolt vs. Revenge.  While I fully believe the complaint of each character has some validity on its own scale, I’m inclined to respond to the vehemence of their rants by suggesting that neither of them has gotten to the existential root of the matter.  What is the anger really about?  What is the real source of the enslavement/imprisonment one sees and revolts against everywhere?  If the world were to be transformed into a paradise, would one’s anger and frustration simply disappear?]

In a short piece about affirmation, a soft-spoken older manj begins: “The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness.”  “To say yes to one instant is to say yes to existence.”

[Both of these quotes express a radical truth that could have come out of the mouth of any of the most enlightened beings who ever lived.  Of course, to give that truth flesh in one’s own experience, to realize it in one’s own life, is the real problem and challenge.]

A young mank is talking about the “new mind” he believes is coming into existence, and about how many of the more extraordinary capacities of the mind are becoming the norm.  He refers to a “radical subjectivity” which will open to a great objectivity.

[This fellow has a very charismatic and seductive way of presenting his ideas, though it would be interesting to find out what compels him to believe that the mind is changing so radically.  As with the “Neo-Human” evolutionist earlier, the idea that any sort of transformation of Man or Mind is immanent is utterly contra-indicated by observation of the world and the selves which we inhabit.12]

A classroom sequence with a chimpanzeel narrating a film short depicting ‘90s punk and grunge bands thrashing about with their fans.  The narration centers on the quest of youth for identity within the rock scene of their particular subculture.  “Art was not the goal, but the occasion and the method for locating our specific rhythm and the buried possiblitities of our time.  The discovery of a new communication is what it was about.”  “No matter how empty or degraded or used up the world seemed... anything was possible.”

[On the one hand, given that this segment treats the dynamics of a specific youth group as if those dynamics were unique to that group, when in fact it’s exactly the same story as that of every generation of youth and its subculture, the piece may be a bit naïve.  On the other hand, given the somewhat over-academic pretension of the narration, and its delivery by a chimp, this may be a clever little satire on the highfalutin what-did-it-all-mean? retro-analyses of youth movements.]

In one of my favorite sequences, which I want to quote at length, an older manm begins with the challenging assertion that “almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior.”

"The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, to the Super Chimpanzee level.  Actually, the gap between, say, Plato and Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human.  The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.  Why so few?  Why is World History and evolution not stories about progress, but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes: no greater values have developed.  The Greeks, 3,000 years ago, were just as advanced as we are.13  So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching their real potential?  The answer to that can be found in another question:  Which is the more universal human characteristic — fear or laziness?"

[Fear, laziness, and the erroneous belief that as we are we already possess all the qualities that are exemplified by the greatest beings — the “real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher” — mentioned above.]

A barflyn is telling the bartendern a well-travelled story about the time he shot a guy full of holes outside Vegas.  “A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny,” the bartender says — a statement which is immediately put to the test in a perversely amusing event that seems like the stuff of Urban Legend.

Our protagonist “wakes up” in bed.  A brief sequence of channel-surfing follows.  In one of the passing images, a womano is speaking about the “venerable tradition of sorcerers and shamans and other visionaries who have developed and perfected the art of dream travel,” the ability to become conscious and volitional in a dream, which is known as “lucid dreaming.”

The next characterp we encounter begins, “You know, they say that dreams are only real as long as they last.  Couldn’t you say the same about life?”  “To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action, and the actual waking perception and action.”

Another characterq states, “I had a friend once who said that the worst mistake you can make is to think that you’re alive, when really you’re asleep in life’s waiting room.”14

In the first sequence in the movie in which our protagonist engages the speaker in a dialogue, rather than exclusively listening, a self-professed “social lubricator of the dream world”r talks about the “damn fun” possibilities presented by lucid dreams, but adds that “most people are either sleepwalking through their waking state or wake-walking through their dreams, so it doesn’t much matter.”

Next, in a film-within-a-film sequence which echoes the dream-within-a-dream theme of our protagonist’s journey, a mans is explaining to a friends why storytelling is better left to literature than to film.  He talks about André Bazin’s theory that, since God is reality and film records images of reality, film is actually capturing God incarnate, capturing “The Holy Moment.”15  Hollywood’s mistake is that it tries to make film into a storytelling medium, but it should be based instead on the people it portrays (“In that sense the ‘star’ system in Hollywood is correct”).  In music, you don’t think first of a story for the song; the music comes first out of that moment.  That’s what film has — that moment.  Holy Moments.  But who could live that way, in a constant state of Holy Moment-realization?  The two men attempt an extemporaneous Holy Moment between themselves.

[Of course, this is what the inner disciplines of most spiritual traditions exist to teach us: how to connect with or open to the “moment.”  The moment is holy if we can be present to ourselves within it; the act of opening to this presence-to-the-moment is a holy act.  The task, the great work, is to uncover the barriers in us that resist the opening, that impede “being present.”]

In one of the most incisive scenes of the film, four young rag-tag guyst are walking along, taking turns spouting off perfunctory and deliberately pompous slogans of anarchism and revolt, such as: 

“Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.”

“Affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.”

“To rupture the spell of the ideology of a commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward.”

They come across an old man clinging to the top of a light post.  “Hey old man, whatcha doin’ up there?”  He doesn’t know.  “Do you need help getting down, sir?”  He doesn’t think so.  “Stupid bastard,” says one under his breath.  Another corrects him: “It’s no worse than us.  I mean, he’s all action and no theory, and we’re all theory and no action.”

[It seems to me that this little vignette fits right into the great tradition of parables and symbolic “teaching stories” used to point up the folly in one’s actions and beliefs.16]

A wiry young manu on a rooftop rambles on nearly incomprehensibly.  “Now I remember, this happened to me before.  That’s why I left.”  “Now my final departure is scheduled.  This way out.  Escaping velocity.  Not just Eternity but Infinity.”  He disappears.

In the film’s longest sequence so far, our hero bumps into a womanv in a stairwell, they exchange perfunctory apologies and begin to proceed on their separate ways.  Then the woman stops and asks if they could do the encounter over again, explaining that she’s tired of being an “ant” running around on autopilot, bumping antennas with other ants running around on autopilot, etc.  Where’s the meaningful contact?  Our protagonist thanks her for jostling him out of his own state of “zombie autopilot.”  He mentions something proposed by D.H. Lawrence, to the effect that two people meeting on a road, instead of just passing and glancing away, could decide to accept what he calls “the confrontation between their souls.”

The couple go off somewhere to talk.  At one point, as the woman is going on about an interactive soap opera idea she has, our protagonist begins to become aware that he’s dreaming.  “I don’t really know how to say this, but... what’s it like to be a character in a dream? — because I’m really not awake right now.”  He goes on to explain the encounters he’s been having, and the effect those encounters have had on him to this point.  He wonders where all this information that’s being imparted to him is coming from, since it feels at once alien and yet vaguely familiar.

The next individual we meetw regales us with statements about life that are as vivid and ebullient as his personality:

“The ongoing ‘Wow’ is happening right now.”

“We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, where even our inabilities are having a roast.”

“We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns.”

“This entire thing we’re invloved with called ‘The World’ is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alientation can be.”

“Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each-other’s presence.”

“The world is an exam to see if we can rise into the direct experiences.”

“On really romantic evenings of self, I go Salsa dancing with my confusion.”

A bald headed, goateed manx emerges out of the night-shadows and informs our hero: “You haven’t met yourself yet.  But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself.  Examine everything you observe.  For example, you might find yourself walking across a dream parking lot [they are walking through a parking lot]; and yes, those are your dream feet inside your dream shoes... And so the person that you appear to be in the dream cannot be who you really are.  This is an image, a mental model.”17

He wakes up back in bed — yet again.  Clearly more weary and distraught, he wanders to the TV and begins channel-surfing again.  Some of the images he encounters are:

A puppet-sermon: “In Hell you sink to the level of your lack of Love; In Heaven you rise to the level of your fullness of Love.”

Director Steven Soderbergh relating a story about Louis Malle making a 2½ million dollar film, and Billy Wilder asking him what it’s about.  Malle says “Well, it’s kind of a dream within a dream,” whereupon Wilder informs him that “You just lost 2½ million dollars.”

The same woman from the earlier channel-flipping session (“the venerable tradition of... dream-travel”) saying that “down 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 a 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 dreamlife, except that in the post-mortal state you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body.”18

Later, our hero passes a man who tells him, “As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.”

Our protagonist sits across from an older woman,y who is talking about how what we are is “just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions.”19  Looking back on her life, or a period of it, she muses:

“It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery.  And I had been a part of that.  It was a gift.  Life was raging all around me, and every moment was magical...  Looking back, connecting with the people is all that really mattered.”

[This segment could almost be the realization of the ‘couple in bed’ sequence earlier, in which the young woman said she often felt she was looking at herself from the perspective of an older woman looking back at the end of her life.]

An elderly woman by a pond is painting, while another elderly woman is apparently sitting for the portrait.  The painter approaches our protagonist and hands him his portrait.  The portrait is somber and charcoal gray.

Inside a club or café, a small chamber ensemble plays a tango.  A couple is dancing.  Our hero ventures upstairs and meets a manz playing pinball.  He recognizes the man as the other passenger on the boat-car earlier.  The pinball man denies this.  Our hero relates the fact that he can’t wake up.  “I’m starting to think that I’m dead.”  Pinball man wants to tell him about a dream he had once.  He refers to the Phillip K. Dick short story, FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID,20 and goes on to relate an incredible story about a series of synchronistic experiences the author had after the book was published.  He mentions that the author was into Gnosticism, and believed that a demiurge or demon had created the illusion of Time to make everyone forget that Christ is about to return; that’s what Time is, that’s what all of history is: this continuous daydream or distraction.21

Pinball man goes on to relate his dream, which featured Lady Gregory, an Irish Folklorist and Yeats’ patron.  “She says, ‘Let me explain to you the nature of the Universe.’”  She explains that Phillip K. Dick was mostly right about Time...

“...except that there is only one instant, and it’s right now, and it’s Eternity; and it’s an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically ‘do you want to be one with Eternity? — do you want to be in Heaven?’  And we’re all saying ‘No thank you, not just yet.’  So Time is just this constant saying ‘No’ to God’s invitation.  That’s what Time is, and it’s no more 50 A.D. than it is 2001.  There’s just this one instant, and that’s what we’re always in.22  And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone’s life.  That behind the phenomenal difference there is but one story, and that’s the story of moving from the ‘No’ to the ‘Yes.’  All of life is like ‘no thank you, no thank you, no thank you,’ then ultimately it’s ‘Yes, I give in;’ ‘Yes, I accept;’ ‘Yes, I embrace.’  That’s the journey.  Everyone gets to the ‘Yes’ in the end, right?”

At this point, our protagonist relates to pinball man his feeling that he’s trapped in a dream-state.  “I keep thinking that I’m waking up but I’m still in a dream.  It’s like it’s been going on forever; I just can’t get out of it, and I want to wake up for real.  How do you really wake up?”  Pinball man hems and haws and prevaricates.  “I don’t know... I’m not very good at that anymore.  But hey, you know, if that’s what you’re thinking, you probably should.  If you can wake up, you should because, you know... someday you won’t be able to.  But it’s easy—just wake up [waves hand in a hypnotic arc between them].”

Our hero wakes up in bed-but is he really awake this time?  The final scene in the movie tends to leave things a bit... up in the air.

[I’ve quoted this sequence at length because I think it presents some powerful and true ideas, but ideas which have to be understood a certain way if their potential and implications are to be appreciated.  First, I think the idea of there being only this one eternal moment is essentially true, but I also think that unless one is actually able to embody that as a living, breathing moment-to-moment realization — not as a mere concept — then it might as well not be true.  The subjective experience of Time depends on several complex and interrelated factors, such as the quality, force and stability of our attention, the subtle energies relating mind and body, and possibly even certain elements of our brain chemistry.  

As for the last statement, about “everyone getting to the ‘yes’ in the end,” I would say this is true depending on what is meant by “in the end.”  If we mean “at the end of this life,” then I think that this “saying Yes” is an experience only the most ripe, enlightened souls might be ready for.  For most of us, getting to this state of openness will require a lifetime of guided effort, discipline and perhaps grace.  If by “in the end” we mean at the end of a vast cycle of births and deaths, then I’m more inclined to agree.  But even so, if we just leave it to the winds of change and chance to “bring us to the yes,” it’s probably not going to happen — not in one lifetime or infinite lifetimes.  What we really have to “say yes” to, then, is the need to work on ourselves in life and in preparation for death.]

By the end of this film, the most striking thing about it may actually go unnoticed, or unappreciated.  And that is just how exceedingly rare it is for a movie to focus so intensively and exclusively on serious ideas and meaningful dialogue, and especially to do so without sounding pretentious or overly serious.  I’m not going to lapse into facile, elitist declarations about how “meaningful” movies are virtually non-existent, and contemporary cinema is a wasteland of banality and vacuity.  In fact, almost the opposite seems to be true lately, with recent films such as MEMENTO, eXistenZ, THE MATRIX, THE TRUMAN SHOW, AMERICAN BEAUTY, THE THIN RED LINE, and RUN LOLA, RUN not only presenting serious ideas in an interesting and engaging way, but achieving some degree of commercial success and popularity to boot.23  But even amidst this wave of philosophically-minded movies, WAKING LIFE stands out both for the sheer volume and intensity of ideas presented within its 100 minutes, and for the sheer delightful audacity of presenting them to us so openly and straight-forwardly.

“The theatre, a sacred discipline,” according to one radical perspective, “is the transforming force that shocks and awakens man from his sleep of death in the puppet theatre, and which can enable man to enter the cosmic theatre whereby he becomes a spectator of all time and all existence.”24  Perhaps the same can and should be said of film.  Does WAKING LIFE measure up to this lofty ideal?  Probably not entirely, although it seems to come as close as any film ever has.  The fact that it even dares to try is a significant and admirable achievement.

As for the technical qualities of the film itself, one of the most effective elements of this movie is that it’s been composed as a quasi-animated feature: the footage of live actors and locations was shot with digital cameras, and then a team of graphic artists worked on ‘rotoscoping’ the image — using computers to “paint” the images in independent layers.  The result is a collage-like image that is constantly in motion, even if that motion is very slight and subtle: backgrounds shift and ripple, characters’ features sometimes look fluid or mobile.  The effect really serves the story since it imparts a distinctly dream-like characteristic to the image: not only is it suggested by interpersonal dynamics that the whole story may take place in a dream, but we always feel slightly unsteady, off-balance and “unreal,” as if in a dream world.  And not since ERASERHEAD has a film had such a self-consistent and effective dream-logic, as if it were composed right from the subconscious mind.  The protagonist simply wanders from one encounter to the next, without explanation or purpose.  We don’t need an explanation or purpose, any more than the character does.  Each situation is taken at face value as a life-experience, totally self-contained and sufficient unto itself.

_________________________

1  The characters presented in SLACKER were decidedly more iconclastic and eccentric, and their stated ideas tended towards the lunatic fringe.  But the rambling documentary style and focus on personal philosophies are the prime characteristics of both films.

2 In the sense in which Jacob Needleman distinguishes “ideas” from “concepts.”  The latter are like formal constructs that help to order and categorize thought; the former entail more essential, universal principles, which perhaps have their origin in a deeper strata of the mind. 

3 And yet it’s Sartre who wrote NAUSEA, a novel (with supposedly more than a few autobiographical elements) about a man’s awakening to the dizzying, nauseating, almost painful realization of his stark embodiedness — basically, his imprisonment in matter.  The book has a distinctly dark and glum feel to it which, combined with the chief existentialist emphasis on absurdity and alientation, tends very much to support the perception of existentialism as a “philosophy of despair” — although Solomon’s statements are nevertheless well-taken and tend to ring true.

4 Sadly, this part of the speech was edited out of the final cut of the movie, but can be found in the deleted scenes on the DVD under the title ‘Solomon’s Speech.’

5 It might be interesting to consider this idea of the limitation of language in light of Gurdjieff’s statement that “for an exact study, an exact language is needed,”  which implies not only the need for an exact language, but its very possibility.  G.I. Gurdjieff, VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD, pp. 60 – 74.

6 Compare this to another individual’s speech later in the film about how we are essentially no more advanced than the chimps.

 7 

“Homo sapiens lives immersed in his everyday life to a point where he forgets himself and forgets where he is going; yet, without feeling it, he knows that death cuts off everything.

"How can we explain that the intellectual who has made marvellous discoveries and the technocrat who has exploited them have left outside the field of their investigations the ending of our lives?  How can we explain that a science which attempts everything and claims everything nevertheless remains indifferent to the enigma revealed by the question of death?  How can we explain why Science, instead of uniting its efforts with its older sister Religion to resolve the problem of Being – which is also the problem of death – has in fact opposed her?

“Whether a man dies in bed or aboard an interplanetary ship, the human condition has not changed in the slightest.”  

Boris Mouravieff, Gnosis: Study and Commentaries 

on the Esoteric Tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy vol. I, xxiii.

8 One recalls the famous, powerful image of the Buddhist monk who, in an act of political protest, burned himself to death in the middle of a Saigon street in 1963.  The similarity is probably not a coincidence, given this man’s speech about the media’s peddling of images of violence.  In an interesting example of pop culture’s appropriation of a violent image of political protest for artistic/commercial ends, this same famous image of the self-immolating monk was used for the cover of an album by the rock group Rage Against The Machine.

 9  Cf. Noam Chomsky, MANUFACTURING CONSENT.

10 Cf. Chögyam Trungpa, THE MYTH OF FREEDOM; P.D. Ouspensky, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS; G.I. Gurdjieff, BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON, as well as many of J. Krishnamurti’s books.  Boris Mouravieff, in GNOSIS (ibid.), makes a similar point when he ascribes to ordinary man not unqualified “freedom,” but merely “freedom of movement;” basically, the freedom of an animal in a big cage full of goodies.  Then there’s Carl Jung’s famous statement to the effect that “Freedom is the ability to do gladly that which I must do,” which suggests that real freedom is freedom from ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ in oneself, and is thus dependent on self-mastery.

11 Although the connection may not be immediately apparent, the following quote about “unity” actually has profound relevance to the issue under discussion since it opens the question of how we understand “free will,” and whether or not we are equal to the problems of actualizing it.

...[T]he unity of things is not realizable by the ordinary mind, in an ordinary state of consciousness.  The ordinary mind, refracted by the countless and contradictory promptings of different sides of human nature, must reflect the world as manifold and confused as is man himself.  A unity, a pattern, an all-embracing meaning—if it exists—could only be discerned or experienced by a different kind of mind, in a different state of consciousness.  It would only be realizable by a mind which had itself become unified.  What unity, for example, could be perceived by even the most brilliant physicist, philosopher or theologian, while he still trips absent-mindedly over a stool, becomes angry at being short-changed, fails to notice when he irritates his wife, and in general remains subject to the daily trivial blindness of the ordinary mind, working with its customary absence of awareness?  Any unity he reaches in such a state can exist only in his imagination.”  Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence, XI.

12 Also implicit in here is the idea that the evolution of consciousness for the entire species can proceed as naturally and automatically as the evolution of the organism supporting it.  From a Gurdjieffian point of view, the development of greater degrees of being or consciousness is not required by nature, and so does not proceed automatically according to natural law.  But it is considered to be attainable through the efforts of the individual.

13 Walker Percy made a similar argument in his book LOST IN THE COSMOS, pp. 6 – 7.  

“Can you explain why it is that there are, at last count, sixteen schools of psychotherapy with sixteen theories of the personality and its disorders, and that patients treated in one school seem to do as well or as badly as patients treated in any other – while there is only one generally accepted theory of the cause and cure of pneumococcal pneumonia and only one generally accepted theory of the orbits of the planets... ? ...[I]f you answer that the study of the human psyche is in its infancy, remember then this infancy has lasted 2,500 years and, unlike physics, we don’t seem to know much more about the psyche than Plato did.”

14 “And because we have breath in our mouths and thoughts in our heads, we shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead.”  Rudyard Kipling.

15 This echoes the old Sufi saying: “There is no God save reality.  To seek […] elsewhere is the action of the fall.”

16 This sort of edifying mise en scène is exemplified in the corpus of teaching tales featuring the droll Middle Eastern character Mulla Nasrudin—a kind of holy fool.  Cf. Idries Shah, THE SUBTLETIES OF THE INIMITABLE MULLA NASRUDIN; THE EXPLOITS OF THE INCOMPARABLE MULLA NASRUDIN, as well as Shah’s numerous non-Mulla related collections.

17 This statement sounds very much like Advaita Vedanta, particularly the last part, if the term ‘in the dream’ is substituted with ‘in this world.’

18 Compare this to the earlier scene with the couple in bed, and their discussion about the brain dreaming at the point of death.

19 “You are a chaos.  Your ego is just a trick to hide the chaos, just a blanket word in which you can go on hiding everything.  You are a madness within.”  Osho/Rajneesh,  UNTIL YOU DIE, pg. 214

20 Phillip K. Dick also authored the short story WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, on which the popular movie TOTAL RECALL was based.  Both the story and the movie build from the premise/question: “What if your whole life has been a dream?”

21 This reminds me of a Japanese Zen master — I can’t recall who — commenting on the inner significance of the book of Genesis in the Christian bible.  In particular, in response to the idea of “In the beginning,” he says, in essence:  “When is the beginning?  The beginning is right now.  The beginning is always right now.”

22 “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh,” Matthew 25:13

23 Granted, some of the most popular of this particular group drew far more attention for special effects (THE MATRIX) or novel editing (MEMENTO) than for what their stories had to say about existential or metaphysical issues.  It seems that, when presented with style and substance in the same movie, substance gets eclipsed and style wins out.

24  Alexander Francis Horn, PONDERINGS OF A CITIZEN OF THE MILKY WAY; xiii

_________________________

a Bill Wise

b Robert Solomon, Associate Professor of Philosophy at U.T. Austin, and the author of over 30 books.

c Kim Krizan, a writer/performer friend and frequent collaborator of director Linklater.

d Eamonn Healy, Bio-Chemist.

e J.C. Shakespeare, writer for the Austin Chronicle.

f Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, reprising their roles from Linklater’s earlier film, BEFORE SUNRISE.

g Charles Gunning, who’s been in most of Linklater’s films.  Apparently this segment was inspired by a performance piece entitled THE ROOM, by Hubert Selby Jr., who wrote LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, both dark, disturbing books made into dark, disturbing films.

h David Sosa, Associate professor of Philosophy at U.T. Austin

i Alex Jones, a libertarian sort of figure well known in Austin for his outspoken radio and cable access shows.

j Otto Hoffman, a Quaker and world-traveled builder of pipe organs, and one of two people who died either just before or just after the completion of this film.

k Aklilu Gebrewold, spokesman for the African Literature Association.

l Steve Fitch, photographer and musician.  It was actually his idea to be “drawn” as a chimp in this sequence.

m Louis Mackey, Associate professor of Philosophy at U.T. Austin.  Viewers may recognize him as the laid back anarchist from SLACKER.

n  Steven Prince, a “great raconteur” who was immortalized in a documentary by Martin Scorsese entitled AMERICAN BOY, a film in which he also tells this story.  The bartender is Ken Webster.

o Professor Mary McBay

p Jason Hodge

q Guy Forsyth, musician

r John Christensen, who died before the completion of the film, and to whose memory the film is dedicated.

s Caveh Zahedi, a filmmaker, and David Jewell, a poet and writer.  It’s Caveh doing most of the talking.

t  Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt, E. Jason Liebrecht, Brent Green.

u Ryan Power, an autistic 14 year old who was the subject of an earlier computer-animated short film entitled SNACK AND DRINK.  Apparently he’s supposed to be an alien here.

v Tiana Hux, performance artist

w Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch, a New York tour guide who’s been immortalized in a documentary film entitled THE CRUISE

x Steve Brudniak, a sculptor and lucid dreamer.

y Mona Lee, acting teacher

z Richard Linklater, the writer and director of WAKING LIFE.