Filmed live in 25 days with 60 actors, including non-professionals, and then edited, it was entrusted to the pencil of Bob Sabiston who, with the help of 30 technicians and in 9 months of work, transformed it into a cartoon. It is the 1st rotoscope (invented in 1917 by the Fleischer brothers and also used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) of the digital era. What doesn't it tell? Characters in search of authors (Bazin, Debord, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and especially Philip K. Dick) walk through the streets of an urban center, talking about everything and reflecting on the meaning of real life, waking life, as the title says. The whole thing is given as a dreamlike nightmare of the protagonist W. Wiggins. The key to interpretation can be found in the ending. In competition at Venice 2001. Animation for cultured and resistant adults.
(il Morandini)
This animated cartoon was shot live in digital video with real actors and then redrawn and colored frame by frame by a team of Texan animators. Bob Sabiston, the set designer, created the software used to transform the shots into paintings to be animated. The director shot the film in just 25 days of shooting with a very small crew. The film tells the story of a boy who, after a car accident, begins to live a long, interminable dream, during which he encounters a series of characters with whom he engages in conversations about the greatest systems of life (death, faith, rationality, existence). A work that easily lends itself to criticism of arrogance, but which invites reflection. An intelligent and stimulating film.
(il Farinotti)
The criticism
“According to Richard Linklater, Waking Life is historically the first animated feature film made in the United States by independents. Maybe it’s true, maybe not. In any case, the unusual and poor animation seems very interesting, which preserves the humanity of the characters instead of pushing it to the extreme realistic consequences of the virtual. An "adult" cartoon, but also a horizontal parade of individuals and cultural stereotypes. Fun, but vaguely horizontal, intellectualistic and indifferent."
Alberto Crespi (Film Tv, 22, 2002)
