So anyway, I watch a lot of movies. That’s one of the main things I do with my spare time (when I’m not out getting drunk with philosophers). I get movies from a few different sources: Blockbuster (stores and online), Public Library, or my own collection; and I usually have something new to watch either every day or every other day. I do most of my movie watching after I get home from work, during that void of the night between 2:00 and 5:00 am. I try (usually unsuccessfully) to be asleep before the sun comes up.<\/p>\n
So yeah, I watch a lot of movies. Therefore, I’ll probably make a lot of entries about movies I’ve recently seen and what I think of them. That is if there is something about them worth discussing, good or bad (I saw “Punisher” the other day, needless to say I wont be posting anything about that one). <\/p>\n
Last night I saw “Waking Life”. Had a couple people tell me what a great movies this is then I came across it at the library. Not sure how I wasn’t aware of this movie before; had I known it was animated I would have seen it ages ago (cause I never outgrew cartoons).<\/p>\n
The first thing that struck me about this movie was the animation style. Although I’m not a big fan of the stroboscopic technique (it’s a little too much like cheating), it works in some places. And it works here. Coupled with the wavy backgrounds and changing art styles, it really creates a dream-like environment.<\/p>\n
I guess for those of you who haven’t seen it, I should throw out a “spoiler warning”. I’ll be giving away the plot, inasmuch as there is a plot.<\/p>\n
This guy is wandering through dreams. Each time he wakes from one dream, he wakes “into” a different dream. Each dream has a different animation style. In each dream the character meets one (or more) people who discuss different philosophical ideas, from the arm-chair variety to the more erudite. I have to admit that, although fascinating at first; as the movie went on, I felt like I was sitting through a marathon of lectures and started to lose interest. About halfway through, my mind started to wander and the “waking into other dreams” theme reminded me of some ideas I’ve had in the past.<\/p>\n
An Aside.<\/p>\n
I had this idea at one time. Call it a story idea, call it a philosophical idea, call it wishful thinking; whatever, not much difference is there? Anyway, it’s probably not a new idea or an original idea, but here it is:<\/p>\n
Say you have this guy. His life isn’t perfect. Matter of fact it’s pretty bad. He’s broke, miserable, alone or whatever. He starts having dreams of himself in a different life. In his dreams, life isn’t so bad. He’s happy, successful…the opposite of his life in the real or “waking” world. Let’s call the the reality of the waking world reality “A” and the reality of the dream world, reality “B”. So he goes to sleep in world A and he wakes up in world B. And to the person in world B, everything that happens in A is a dream (or nightmare). There is a mirror relationship between the two. Which one is the real one and which one’s the dream. The guy in world A begins to hope that he’s the dream, and of course the guy in B wants to be the “real” one. But each one is aware that at anytime, whoever is dreaming whom could just wake up, or start dreaming something else, or even die in his sleep. So…<\/p>\n
This has nothing to do with the movie in question, just the way my mind wanders sometimes. And my mind was wandering toward the end of the movie. Until they played the PKD<\/a> card. <\/p>\n This movie was made infinitely more cool with the inclusion of a Philip K Dick reference, “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said<\/a>“. Haven’t read that one (there’s a whooole<\/i> lot of PKD I haven’t read). But the actual reference was to an essay he had written about the story. In the essay, he brings up ideas that he uses in VALIS<\/a> (50 AD, the demiurge, punching through time…). It was a fascinating segment.<\/p>\n That’s the thing though, each segment kind of stands on it’s own with hardly any connection to the other segments. And some segments are stronger than others. There’s hardly any kind of narrative flow (other than dream-logic I suppose). No plot Not that that’s a bad thing. Dream-logic can be a good thing, but it kind of gets bogged down in the middle with all the constant lectures.<\/p>\n So did I like it?<\/p>\n Sure I did, I just think it didn’t quite live up to the expectations I had after watching the first few scenes, but it was saved by a strong ending.<\/p>\n Okay, I know I said there was no plot, but there is, and it doesn’t really become evident till the end of the movie…<\/p>\n “Spoiler Warning” again.<\/b><\/p>\n Seems that the guy gets hit by a car early on, and the movie is a depiction of his “dying dream” that just seems to go on and on and he can’t wake up from it. Y’know, because he’s dead.<\/p>\n So that’s the end of my rambling, and this is the part where I ask for any other thoughts and ideas. Those of you who have seen this, what did you get out of it? How far off-base or on-target am I? Just curious is all.<\/p>\n Ron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So anyway, I watch a lot of movies. That’s one of the main things I do with my spare time (when I’m not out getting drunk with philosophers). I get movies from a few different sources: Blockbuster (stores and online), Public Library, or my own collection; and I usually have something new to watch either … Continue reading “Waking Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/happypoet.com\/hlf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}