Waking Life
Waking Life is an animated film directed by Richard Linklater and made in 2001.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
In a broad scope, Waking Life is about a young man in a dream state. During his dream he encounters many characters who philosophize about free will, human existence, perception, reality, and many other topics. There is a large amount of speech done on the topic of existentialism and the misconceptions that are commonly held about it. As the main character travels through his dream he eventually comes to realize that he is dreaming (see lucid dreaming), and that he cannot wake up. Throughout the movie, it is unclear what is happening to the main character and why he is in this dream, among possible explanations is that he is dead.
Waking Life has a unique visual style, in that it was filmed in live action, then rendered into animation on a Macintosh computer. This animation technique is known as rotoscoping. The program used to do this was created specifically for the movie, and has the effect of making the visuals more surreal.
Nominated for numerous awards mainly for its technical achievements, Waking Life won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film", the New York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film", and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the Venice Film Festival for "Best Film". Waking Life was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award.
The film's soundtrack, all of it performed and written by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra, except for one track written by Frédéric Chopin, has also been quite successful (especially for a non hit-driven soundtrack). Featuring the nuevo tango style, it bills itself the 21st Century Tango.
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