IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS
by Chris Dashiell

"Well, that was different!" is a comment that is usually dismissive, indicating that the film in question was too different to be enjoyable, comprehensible, or otherwise successful. Mixed in with this, however, is the implication that difference - i.e. divergence from what the viewer expects from a film - is inherently wrong. And what does the viewer expect? That, of course, varies from person to person - but a great deal of the time, it seems to me, it comes down to either the familiarity of genre or the notion of entertainment as spectacle for a passive observer. It should go without saying that the opposite idea - i.e., difference for its own sake is automatically worthwhile - is just as facile. But what's missing in all this is the need of an artist, and for an art form, to test and expand creative limits, to break through habitual ways of seeing so as to express new meanings, or old meanings in vital new ways.

Richard Linklater's Waking Life is a prime instance of this need for "difference" - with all the pleasures, perils, and contradictions that are involved. It is an animated film with a difference - live-action photography transformed, courtesy of art director Bob Sabiston, into computer graphics. The result is an intense portrait of the world as flux - everything, from the sky and landscape to familiar objects, people's bodies and facial expressions, is always moving and changing color. This is the closest simulation of the lycergic vision, in which the nouns (things) of the world are experienced as verbs (actions), that has been achieved on film. (It would be interesting to trace the influence of the psychedelic experience on animation from, say, Yellow Submarine to now.) A friend of mine walked out of the movie after twenty minutes - the ever-shifting imagery was giving her motion sickness.

Cartoons have always been action-oriented, as was inevitable in such an overwhelmingly visual art form. But Linklater pushes against this form - Waking Life with its amazing "look," - is about people talking and listening, with practically no action in the usual sense at all. What we see is a young man, presumably a college student, wandering about town and campus and having conversations with (or often just listening to monologues by) various characters, frequently of an abstract nature. Sometimes we meet other talkers who are not in this man's orbit, but the situation is the same: discussions or monologues on matters existentialist, metaphysical, historical-cosmological, political- theoretical, casually speculative, spiritual - or just plain rants. The combination of the astounding visual technique (urging the eye to move along with the imagery), with a mostly abstract verbal onslaught, makes it almost impossible for a viewer to settle into a passive stance. You have to pay attention, and depending on your state of mind at the moment, that can be stimulating or exhausting - perhaps both at different times.

The common complaint I have heard about Waking Life is that the talk has the tiresome quality of an undergraduate bull session, the sort of conversations 19-year-olds might have after a few bong hits, along the lines of "Wow, did you ever wonder if this is all a dream, or that nothing really existed before you were born?" etc. Well, to be honest, some of it is like that. (A scene featuring the Before Sunrise duo of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, talking earnestly in bed, is of this cringe-inducing variety.) But there is also more strictly academic talk, the kind of fast-paced riffing on literary theory or socioevolutionary possibility that you might very well hear over coffee with a voluble professor. I suspect that some of the hostility towards this is nothing more than traditional American anti-intellectualism. Those who are not interested in abstract thought condemn it as useless, instead of just admitting to themselves that they're not interested and leaving it at that.

In any case, not all the talk in Waking Life is abstract in this sense. A rant by an enraged roughneck who has been locked up for an unspecified crime is notable for a complete lack of reflection or self-awareness - a disturbing portrait of vengefulness and blame that is quite effective. Then there are street thinkers, crackpot philosophers with bits of truth glimmering through their monomania. The common thread is the expression of one's cosmic world view, and Linklater, with a daring that I find admirable, gives the voices room to stretch out to their limits.

Many of the conversations begin to center on the idea of the dream, and its place in and relation to reality. It appears that the young man, played by Wiley Wiggins, is dreaming all this, and every time he wakes up, it turns out to be another dream. This theme is not very illuminating, I think, because the form doesn't really seem like dreaming. The visual style does have a sort of drifting unreality about it, but dreams don't generally consist of lucid, abstract conversations. Linklater wants to evoke the world as utterly in the mind, i.e. subjectivity - it's a truism in Eastern thought that life itself is a dream, seen in the light of the Divine or Reality, but the way the dream analogy is used in Waking Life, as a sort of puzzle, tends to confuse the issue.

Metaphysical speculation is a recurring human phenomenon, and I find it amusing that many dismiss it out of hand, as if they already knew the answers, or are unable to take the questions seriously because of the way they're posed. Linklater stirs the soup in Waking Life without ever serving it to us, and there's a freshness in that attitude that I like. He's one of the few filmmakers around that would try something this weird, and although I don't think it's a complete success, I found it a fascinating and enjoyable experience. There's a sense of sadness as well here, an element in the way the mystery of conscious life is evoked, as a perpetual wandering, a seeking, and an inquiry in the midst of the utterly strange.

***

Fantasy adventure now rules the box office in the form of Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. I enjoyed both films - especially the Tolkien - but they also gave me cause to reflect on the current pitfalls in the genre. It is my belief that the Big Action Sequence, and the obsession with creating it, runs counter to the spirit, and ultimately the success, of fantasy.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone does rather well in its first hour or so, maintaining a playful, children's story energy, setting up the tale with its school of apprentice sorcerers and all the whimsical little details that go along with it. The sequence involving Harry's visit to a kind of witch's marketplace, where he purchases a wand, is full of witty touches. I liked the talking hat that decides which section of the school each student will go to. There are too many shots of children looking at some astounding thing and saying "Woa!" or "Wow!" as if we needed to be told how amazing it is. But that's a mere quibble.

Then the plot kicks in, and with it comes a series of Big Action Sequences, through which the hero and his two companions race on their journey to the final Big Action Sequence. Some of these are better than others. The cumulative effect dulls one's interest rather than stimulates it, I think, because the elaborate mechanics of the BAS take center stage over the characters. I suppose the director, Chris Columbus, thinks that everyone wants to be overwhelmed with effects and loud noises or they won't be satisfied. Maybe audiences have been conditioned to the point where they really do want and demand this. But I believe that "less is more" in the realm of fantasy, and that one or two good effects, with better developed characters experiencing them, is more satisfying than four or five spectacular effects with thin characters. In this genre, the viewer's identification with the characters is a vital element of his or her enjoyment. The more attention paid to that element, the more pleasant or exciting an even modest special effect or action sequence will be.

I found Harry Potter to be disappointingly conventional in its second half, with its chase scenes and predictable character-building lessons. The fact that the franchise was handed to Columbus, certainly one of the least adventurous directors in the business, shows that Warner Brothers isn't taking any chances. It's a pity, but it could have been worse. The movie is still enjoyable fluff, and with luck the sequels might get better.

It's hard to imagine someone doing much better than Peter Jackson in adapting The Fellowship of the Ring. Not only has he created, with help from Grant Major and a huge team of artists, a convincing sword and sorcery universe, but he knows how the characters need to move within that universe without appearing silly or too cute. It's an eye-popping epic without parallel in fantasy film, and when you consider the mess that could have been made from Tolkien's massive trilogy, there's reason to congratulate Jackson on a job well done.

But at the risk of playing the spoilsport, I have to report that I found myself feeling wearied at times during the film. It wasn't the length (which I feel is justified), or my own mental state (I was thoroughly awake and alert). No, I think part of it was due to Tolkien's story itself, and a great deal of it due to the Big Action Sequence.

I find Tolkien's mythology of power, with its primal Good and Evil duality, unoriginal and uninteresting. I'm willing to go along with it for the sake of the tale, but it doesn't resonate with me. And the story, at least as reflected in this screenplay, seems to be just one chase scene after another.

Jackson and crew have spent a lot of time on their monsters and battles and chase scenes. The villains get very close to the heroes (too close, I think) before the heroes escape in hair-raising fashion, over and over again. The special effects are great - but too much time is spent on them. The constant action, with only occasional down time, the relentless visual and aural bombardment, is exhausting. More attention could have been paid to the characters, with fewer and more modest BAS's, to ultimately better effect.

By no means do I think this ruins the movie. Jackson is far more successful here than Columbus is with the Harry Potter film. The picture has enough grandeur to offset its flaws. I point it out more as an indicator of where we are in the fantasy adventure genre, and what it would be best to avoid in the future. Special effects are like a brand new toy that directors are having fun playing with. There seems to be little consideration given, at least much of the time, to how an effect actually fits within the artistic purpose of a given film. Digital wonders are flung at us for their own sake, like thrills at a theme park. Sometimes they really are thrilling, but they still tend to overwhelm the picture, turning it into a monstrous jumble of noise and distraction, making story serve effect instead of the other way around. The result is soullessness - empty spectacles that provide momentary distractions without satisfying the age-old need for a good story, or communicating an authentic meaning. Entertainment itself is undermined, because only the small part of the brain that wants to constantly be excited is entertained. The rest of our nature is ignored as if it didn't exist. In the rare case, such as The Fellowship of the Ring, where the filmmaker has a strong feeling for the material, the overemphasis on effects still tends to drain the movie of some of its power rather than enhance it.

A persistent challenge for filmmakers, then, who work with special effects, will be to know how to employ these effects wisely for the sake of the film, its style and story, and for nothing else. Only then will these technical devices, which are now used haphazardly in the quest for mere sensation, actually be integrated into the art of film in a meaningful way.

©2002 Chris Dashiell
CineScene