Talk Distracts From ‘Life’s’ Rich Images

Few studios have ever released a film like Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life,” but then there’s never been another film quite like this adventurous yet problematic undertaking. The Austin, Texas, filmmaker who came to renown with “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused” and “Before Sunrise” has experimented with a new animation technique, which involved shooting and editing the film as a live-action work and then having a team of more than 30 graphic artists “paint” each frame via computer.

The effect is dazzlingly beautiful and surreal, as if a series of paintings-by-the-numbers with their flat unshaded hues had come alive but are seen under water. This wobbly effect is at times heightened by a solarization, giving the images a metallic gleam, which is in keeping with the question Linklater poses: “Are we sleepwalking through our waking state or walking through our dream awake?”

To attempt to answer the question, he introduces us to his young hero (Wiley Wiggins of “Dazed and Confused”), who is early on hit by a car and may or may not be in a coma as a result--he may even be dead and thrashing his way through limbo. He then encounters some 30 actual people, with Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Speed Levitch, Adam Goldberg and filmmakers Steven Soderbergh and Caveh Zahedi the most familiar. They are in effect playing themselves--they may not be existing solely in his dreams as he attempts to discover whether he’s asleep or awake, dead or alive. (He seems to lean toward the notion that he’s asleep and desperate yet afraid to wake up.)

What’s problematic about the film--and it is seriously off-putting--is that the responses Wiggins gets from those he encounters are for the most part lengthy treatises on the human condition that add up to a very large slice of Western thought crammed into 97 minutes, when it is more customarily dealt with in four years of undergraduate classic liberal arts courses--with graduate studies to follow.

Now Linklater may be making a satirical point about how the human mind can construct a world of words so elaborate as to end up meaningless. Unfortunately, whatever point he is trying to make with this wall of words is almost immediately wearying and soon yawn-inducing. Worst of all, all this talk distracts the viewer from the constant pleasure the film’s visual richness provides. Maybe the trick--indeed, the point--of “Waking Life” is to look at it and not listen to it at all.

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MPAA rating: R, for language and some violent images. Times guidelines: The talk and images are mild, but its themes are adult and intellectual; not a family animation film.

‘Waking Life’

A Fox Searchlight Pictures release of an Independent Film Channel Productions and Thousand Words presentation of a Flat Black Films/Detour Filmproduction. Writer-director Richard Linklater. Producers Anne Walker-McBay, Tommy Pallotta, Palmer West, Jonah Smith. Executive producers Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan, John Sloss. Camera Linklater. Editor Sandra Adair. Music Tosca Tango Orchestra. Original score by Glover Gill. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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