Waking Life

Waking Life is an American animated film directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and existentialism. The title is a reference to philosopher George Santayana's maxim: "Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." The film was entirely rotoscoped, although it was shot using digital video with a team of artists drawing stylized lines and colors over each frame with computers, rather than being filmed and traced onto cels on a light box. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their characters from Before Sunrise in one scene. Waking Life is about an unnamed young man living an ethereal existence that lacks transitions between everyday events and that eventually progresses to a state of self-reflective lucidity. For most of the film he observes quietly but later participates actively in philosophical discussions involving other characters—ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday...