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A view from the coast

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on October 28, 2001 at 12:20:18

In Reply to: waking life- uniquely brilliant posted by tunenut on October 24, 2001 at 10:01:31:

This is from Duncan Shepard, my favorite critic, although this week's column is not one of his best. (New ones post every Thursday.)

Waking Life, shot in live action (by Richard Linklater) and then painted over via computer (by, or under, Bob Sabiston), is neither fish nor fowl. Certainly fishy, however, and possibly foul. I can't speak to it as a visual chaser to some mind-altering substance, a sort of Yellow Submarine for Generation Ecstasy. I can only testify that the undulating, sloshing animation on top of the already unsteady camerawork is very hard on the eyes. And any added visual interest from this cinematic hybrid, or mutant, is actually a distraction from the droning verbalizations on fate, free will, existentialism, evolution, reincarnation, linguistics, the "ontology" of film, etc., spiced with literary allusions to Lorca, Lawrence, Stevenson, Mann, Kierkegaard, etc. -- something like a semester's worth of highlights from a Philosophy major's bull sessions. The desultory narrative apparently depicts -- we cannot be completely sure -- the adventures in the afterlife of a laid-back slacker (Wiley Wiggins, from Dazed and Confused) who gets run over by a car. More precisely it depicts a vision of the afterlife as an endless and uninterrupted sequence of dreams. (A more precise title for the film: Unwaking Death.) To the unprovable assertion that the visual technique presents a plausible likeness of, or metaphor for, the afterlife, my comments would be two: (1) it was hard on the eyes even before the protagonist entered the afterlife; and (2) the afterlife, if indeed this is what it looks or feels like, is too hard on the eyes to be a suitable screen subject.

• http://www.sdreader.com/ed/mv/shepherd/SHEPHERD.HTM   (Open in New Window)

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