Rave review: Linklater's "Waking Life"

[Using Google Groups I can't narrow followups, so I
haven't posted this as widely as I might-- but repost
it as freely as you like.]

The Web needs a collective project to annotate Richard
Linklater's philosophical masterpiece, "Waking Life"
(RL's WL).

One of the big problems with philosophy is that when
interesting insights are made abstract, they quickly
become dull and largely inaccessible to the average
reader, but RL has collected a wide range of insights
and perspectives centered around the theme of
*dreaming*, and made them maximally vivid by framing
them as dream-dialogs between particular characters,
brilliantly written and acted, but then _blurred_ into
dreaminess by rotoscoping(?) the filmed scenes so they
appear to be hand-drawn.

I've long believed that great art aspires to the
subjective quality of dreams, with the best poems of
Wallace Stevens being the clearest example. WL is a
beautiful demonstration of how that works, while
simultaneously exploring what dreaming might imply
about the nature of reality, and especially the
challenge of being born into this society that seems
arranged to deny _all_ the deepest truths.

I'm imagining a future version of The Sims in which
the player can be fooled as to whether a scene is
Real or Dream (flip the virtual lightswitch and see?).

WL offers a rich catalog of relevant nuances that
such a simulation must try and capture. And I bet
if you watch it enough, your life will start to seem
like an extended episode in the movie...

jorn DeleteThis @enteract.com (Jorn Barger) wrote in message news:<16e613ec.0402030637.6833907c DeleteThis @posting.google.com>...
> [Using Google Groups I can't narrow followups, so I
> haven't posted this as widely as I might-- but repost
> it as freely as you like.]
>
> The Web needs a collective project to annotate Richard
> Linklater's philosophical masterpiece, "Waking Life"
> (RL's WL).
>
> One of the big problems with philosophy is that when
> interesting insights are made abstract, they quickly
> become dull and largely inaccessible to the average
> reader, but RL has collected a wide range of insights
> and perspectives centered around the theme of
> *dreaming*, and made them maximally vivid by framing
> them as dream-dialogs between particular characters,
> brilliantly written and acted, but then _blurred_ into
> dreaminess by rotoscoping(?) the filmed scenes so they
> appear to be hand-drawn.
>
> I've long believed that great art aspires to the
> subjective quality of dreams, with the best poems of
> Wallace Stevens being the clearest example. WL is a
> beautiful demonstration of how that works, while
> simultaneously exploring what dreaming might imply
> about the nature of reality, and especially the
> challenge of being born into this society that seems
> arranged to deny _all_ the deepest truths.
>
> I'm imagining a future version of The Sims in which
> the player can be fooled as to whether a scene is
> Real or Dream (flip the virtual lightswitch and see?).
>
> WL offers a rich catalog of relevant nuances that
> such a simulation must try and capture. And I bet
> if you watch it enough, your life will start to seem
> like an extended episode in the movie...

I agree